Saturday, February 16, 2013

Double Impact - Jean Claude Van Damme (1991) - Cha Kwo Ling Road Service Rd, Yau Tong

Classic JCVD this time with an opening that is supposed to show the inauguration ceremony for the cross harbour tunnel. The film crew did a fairly good job with a mock up of the entrance but the tunnel itself was fairly obviously a matte painting stuck behind it.

Anyway, some clues in the background tell us where the film set was created. The first being the distinctive shape of Mt Parker on HK island behind and the second is the nearby rockface that looks to have been blasted to create space for the road. Here are a few grabs.


Anyway, the road we can see is still around although understandably a little bit more built up than it was in 1991. The giveaway is in fact the rocky face behind the camera man - it's a bit dirtier than it was back then but the shame shape can still be made out.


Little known fact: Although Sheldon Lettich is credited as the director of this film, it was in fact action master Vic Armstrong who was in charge as he showed Sheldon the "ropes". Also, Vic's brother Andy - another leading light in today's stunt industry - who played JCVD's gunned down father.

4 comments:

JC said...

So does the Harbour tunnel even exist???

Phil said...

Hi JC - it does indeed but is much larger in real life, but actually looks very similar. They did a reasonable job at the reconstruction.

In reality the tunnel was opened in 1972 with great fanfare and Lydia Shum (aka Fei Fei) sitting in a vintage car driving through it to prove how safe it was i.e. if someone as fat as her can do it then it must be safe...typical HK way of thinking for the time hehe

JC said...

Indeed the entrance looks very similar to the real one. However in the movie the tunnel is called the ''Victoria Harbour Tunnel'', whereas in real life, it's called the ''Cross Harbour Tunnel''.

There is no way they could've used the real entrance of the tunnel considering that around 121 700 vehicles go through it daily!!!

Good job of finding the location. I doubt someone who doesn't live in Kong Kong could've figured this out!

Phil said...

Hi JC

The real tunnel is also about 10 times the size and to close it down for filming would have caused utter chaos.

At the time of filming (1990?) the only other cross harbour tunnel was the newly opened eastern harbour tunnel - and coincidentally THAT tunnel is located directly underneath this filming location :-)

Phil

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