Film Review: 100 Ways to Murder Your Wife 殺妻二人組 (1986) - Hong Kong
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
I rated it 6.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★
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There are movies that feel like they were made in a fever dream after too many drinks at the pub, and then there’s “100 Ways to Murder Your Wife,” a cheerfully demented Hong Kong comedy that takes the Hitchcock premise of “Strangers on a Train” and drags it kicking and screaming into the world of 1980s Cantonese farce. Kenny Bee, who also directs and stars, seems to have asked himself: what if two footballers got so fed up with married life that they agreed to bump off each other’s wives? The answer is 93 minutes of slapstick murder plots, marital misunderstandings, and that unmistakable golden-era Hong Kong energy that somehow makes domestic homicide feel like a vaudeville routine.
The film opens with two friends, Roberto (Bee) and Fa (Chow Yun-fat), drowning their marital sorrows in alcohol. One thing leads to another, and suddenly they’ve made a pact straight out of a bad noir: you kill my wife, I’ll kill yours. What follows is less a crime thriller than a comedy of escalating errors, full of elaborate (and spectacularly failed) assassination attempts, mistaken identities, and enough pratfalls to stock a dozen Three Stooges shorts. Chow Yun-fat, even this early in his ascent, brings effortless charm and comic timing—he can make even the most ridiculous scheme feel oddly charismatic. Anita Mui and Joey Wang, as the respective wives, are given thankless but game roles; they’re mostly there to be imperiled, glamorous, and occasionally furious, but they commit fully to the chaos.
Bee’s direction is functional rather than inspired. He knows his audience wants broad laughs, football gags, and star power, and he delivers. The film moves at a brisk clip, never lingering too long on any one joke before hurling the next one at you. There are moments of genuine visual wit—some of the murder contraptions have a delightfully loony Rube Goldberg quality—and the Hong Kong locations add a lived-in texture that feels authentic even when the plot is pure nonsense.
The film is often more exhausting than exhilarating. The humor is pitched at a relentlessly broad level, and after a while the slapstick starts to feel repetitive. The premise, played almost entirely for laughs, walks a tricky tonal line; it’s satirical about unhappy marriages, yet some of the gags haven’t aged especially gracefully. This is very much a product of its time—cheeky, sexist in passing, and unapologetically silly. Modern viewers may find themselves laughing despite themselves while also wincing a little.
Still, there’s undeniable pleasure in watching Chow Yun-fat and Kenny Bee bounce off each other, and the film captures something quintessentially 80s Hong Kong: the giddy freedom of stars who hadn’t yet been polished into international icons, just having fun making something ridiculous. It’s not a great film, and it’s certainly not a subtle one, but it has a certain disreputable charm. Like a plate of late-night street food—greasy, indulgent, and strangely satisfying in the moment. (Neo, 2026)