Easy Money (1987)

If you're going to be a successful thief, don't litter!

Michelle Yeoh and George Lam play a cat and mouse game of thief and insurance detective gallivanting across Hong Kong and Europe. Even Queen Elizabeth shows up!

Michelle Yeoh portrayed a bored heiress always looking for the next thrill. She assembles a diverse team who succeed in robbing an armored truck of $32 million without anyone getting hurt. Kent Cheng is the shady cop assigned to hunt down the culprits and George Lam is the debonair insurance agent also trying to get the money back. And Ku Feng plays an integral role as a hapless part of the heist team.

The movie starts in England, moves to Hong Kong, then to Switzerland, and Paris. Aside from Yeoh and Lam, much of the appeal of this movie is watching the stars ski, hang glide and race through the beautiful locations.
This was one of Michelle Yeoh's earliest movies and the last one before she took a break. She was gorgeous, even with 1980's hair, but she wasn't given much to do aside from the daredevil hobbies. Lam was suave enough, but again not fully developed. The plot was reminiscent of a more tamed down The Thomas Crown Affair.

Easy Money had trouble maintaining suspense after the heist was pulled. Though Kent Cheng foamed at the mouth and used illegal means to try and trap the adrenaline junkie I was never worried because George and Michelle never seemed to be. Their chemistry didn't exactly sizzle, the kind of heat that would cause two cool customers to take the risks they did and the romance was never developed anymore than their characters. We don't know much more about them at the end of the movie than we did at the beginning.

This was a perfectly pleasant watch but could have been a more exhilarating ride if the writers had paid as much attention to the characters as they did the scenery.

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