City Cops is a 1989 action film starring Cynthia Rothrock, Michiko Nishiwaki, Miu Kiu-wai, Shing Fui-on (of The Killer (1989) fame) and Kent Tong.
Cynthia Rothrock plays Cindy, an FBI agent on assignment in Hong Kong, on the track of an escaped mafia leader. Reluctantly forced into an alliance with a pair of bumbling Hong Kong cops, Tai-kau and Shing, Cindy ends up stumbling into a conspiracy where the mafia is in league with a yakuza syndicate which has set up base in Hong Kong, leading to a final showdown where Cindy, Tai-kau and Shing takes on the combined forces of the yakuza and mafia.
City Cops includes the following tropes:
- Action Girl: Protagonist Cindy, played by Cynthia Rothrock.
- Badass Crew: Cindy and her two allies, the Hong Kong police detectives Kent and Tai-kau, who leads a daring assault on the warehouse used by the Yakuza and mafia as hideout.
- Bar Brawl: Cindy halfway through the first act gets to fight a group of bouncers when confronting a mob leader in a nightclub.
- Covers Always Lie: One of the film's VCD cover
◊ actually shows a screenshot of Michiko Nishiwaki from God of Gamblers. It's misleading as hell, as Michiko at NO point in the movie disrobes herself or sport a hairstyle like depicted on the alternate cover. - Darkened Building Shootout: Cindy's Action Prologue where she takes on a bunch of mafia goons in a dimly-lit apartment block.
- Designated Girl Fight: The final battle in the warehouse inevitably culminates with Cindy, the protagonist and sole female member of the good guys, fighting Michiko, who leads the Yakuza, hand-to-hand.
- Gorgeous Gaijin: Most of the Hong Kong police officers, including Kent and Tai-kau, considers the Caucasian Cindy to be gorgeous and repeatedly tries flirting with her and finding a chance to hang out around her. She is NOT impressed.
- Human Shield: Cindy does this to more than one mook during shootouts. Of note being Shikamuka's bodyguard during the arrest scene, where Cindy uses him as a shield for an ill-timed katana swing.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Averted, Shikamuka get his hands on a katana and tries to rough up Cindy with it, but all he achieves includes accidentally hacking his bodyguard to death, getting its blade locked by Cindy's twin sais and getting his ass kicked while struggling to retrieve his weapon.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: The climax of the movie, which is Cindy, Tai-kau and Shing taking on a small legion of Yakuza and mafia to save Kent's sister abducted by Michiko's goons.
- Sinister Shades: The Mafia's goons wears shades in every scene they show up, including during daytime.
- Tomboyish Ponytail: Cindy in a few scenes.
- The Tooth Hurts: Attempted by the Mafia during the opening scene, when they tries interrogating a captured police detective by lowering a drill into his mouth. Cindy's timely arrival by shooting the drill-holding Mafia henchman saves him from a world of pain.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Yakuza leader Shikamuka, who dominates much of the film's first half, turns out to be a rather forgettable Disc-One Final Boss; after Cindy infiltrates his headquarters and arrests him, he promptly dissappears from the picture (he didn't die onscreen, the movie just somehow forgot he even existed at that point) and is replaced by his subordinate Michiko.
- Yakuza: They're the secondary villains of the picture, showing up halfway through the second act. There's the supervisor Shikamuka (who dissappears for some reason after his arrest) and the real Big Bad, the yakuza queen Michiko.
