A Moment of Romance

(Tian ruo you qing)
Benny Chan, Hong Kong, 1990
2 out of 4 stars

A jewelry heist leads to a getaway, which leads to a hostage situation, which leads the most carelessly-run police lineup I’ve seen in a film (who knows if the Hong Kong police were or still are that careless), which to an unlikely, and somewhat poorly-motivated, love between a triad (Andy Lau) and a well-off, sheltered young woman (Wu Shien-lien. The English title is perhaps misleading in that the majority of the “moments” in the film are devoted to “romance.” The gangster plot, while crowded with violent but ill-defined feuding bigshots whose machinations are difficult to follow, is mostly relegated to the backdrop.

Despite all this, A Moment of Romance is a particularly unfocused film even in its brief 90 or so minutes. Characterization is all but nonexistent; instead all the principles, including a “sidekick” who hints at being developmentally challenged, are just one-dimensional stock characters, which is perhaps unsurprising considering that the plot is also quite clichéd; there are a couple flirtations with moral ambiguity, but even those seem to be rote in the context of the overall film. Furthermore, nothing about how the film unfolded encouraged me to relate to the characters or to be concerned about their fates; the closest I came to that was a highly-detached, mild curiosity about which of the several conventional paths the filmmakers would take as the ending loomed (and it’s not all that hard to guess, either).

Of course, style can sometimes make up for these failings, but despite some promising flourishes in the early car chase sequence, there is little about the film that is stylistically compelling either. As is typical of even the better Hong Kong films from this era, the music is uninformly horrible, either baroque or repetitive, and at least three interminable Cantopop song montages caused me to decrease the volume. Honestly, it wasn’t an entirely painful experience, but I’m at a loss as to why this was recommended on various websites (I forget which, exactly). Perhaps it was more a product of its time than anything, or perhaps I just don’t appreciate the style.

Source: Tai Seng DVD
17 Aug, 11:06 PM

One Nite in Mongkok

(Wong gok hak yau)
Derek Yee, Hong Kong, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

They tell you from the beginning, if you're paying attention, that this movie is about fate. Although many of the Hong Kong films dealing with cops and gangsters emphacize some form of honor or heroism, this picture very quickly sets the stage for a tale that is grittier not in the sense that it depicts unpleasant events (although there is that too), but in that it does not provide us with these comforting lenses through which to observe the action.

For one thing, it takes quite a while for the protaganist, a young man from the mainland hired to kill a gang boss, to even appear in the picture. Although his story ultimately drives the film, albeit with frequent cutaways to the police and their attempt to avert a gang war, the fact that he doens't show up until events lead to his introduction seems to show that, even though our focus is on him, he is only a part of larger events. In fact his introduction is surprising, as before we meet him the film seems heading towards more of an ensemble approach, but Daniel Wu turns in a good performance as the often-conflicted, somewhat naive and moralistic would-be killer. His costar, Cecilia Cheung, does overplay her more cliched "prostitute with a heart of gold" role (although it may just be overwritten as well), but their relationship, strange as it is, is nonetheless appealing, as they are both in Hong Kong due to similarly dire conditions in their home villages, bringing in an important social critique to the film (not something I've seen in many Hong Kong cop films).

I enjoyed this film quite a bit, in part because it is extremeley foreboding, particularly the closer you get to the end, but is not unrelenting. Rather than whip you up into some exaggerated frenzy of dread, One Nite in Mongkok (pity about the idiotic spelling in the English title) is more about the banality of coincidence (or fate, I guess) and the compromises that all the characters have made with varying degrees of deliberateness. This makes for a film that is both more interesting and more challenging than most.

Finally, although I lack the filmic vocabulary to go into detail, the film is shot with a good degree of energy and artistry. While ultimately it falls under the umbrella of mainstream film, there does seem to have been an artsy inclination on the part of the filmmakers, and in this case I'd say their ambition was well-realized.

Source: Tai Seng DVD
21 April, 8:45 PM

Breaking News

(Daai si gin)
Johnnie To, Hong Kong / China, 2004
3 out of 4 stars

The film kicks off with a violent confrontation between police and robbers, in which a beat cop is caught in the fray and, what’s worse, caught on camera looking particularly unheroic. This opening sequence is a setup for an hostage plot in which the commanding officer’s main goal is to craft a counternarrative for the media in order to restore her department’s credibility and public image.

The word “satire” popped into my head as I thought about how to describe this movie, but aside from some typically dubious uses of technology, the film avoids that slightly-exaggerated, larger-than-life tone of most satirical films. Indeed, it’s commentary on how PR holds equal importance with solving crime for police today is not particularly subtle, but it does constitute an interesting angle for what could have otherwise been a rote police drama. I find it interesting that, for the most part, the filmmakers refrain from condemning anyone overtly. This leads to less of the usual hand-wringing and finger pointing that we might expect from an American mainstream film attempting to tackle this subject.

The main downside to this film is that characterization is very slight. This is, of course, a film without much filler or prologue, so this decision seems to have been deliberate. I must confess, however, that I do like characterization, and without it, the connections between the characters sometimes seem hard to understand or unearned. It’s also a little difficult to see how the stock “renegade cop” character really ties in to the central commentary of the film, except until maybe the end, and that doesn’t seem to be that crucial, really. It’s almost as if his character is a major concession to the “bread and circuses” reality of mainstream film, something that is as much of an issue in Hong Kong as it is here, in all honesty.

Source: UMVD DVD
10 June, 8:27 PM

Fong Sai Yuk

Corey Yuen, Hong Kong, 1993
3.5 out of 4 stars

Old kung fu films have a reputation in the US as being overly-corny, which is perhaps why all of the 21st century, internationally-targeted martial arts films are so deathly serious, perhaps overcompensating a bit with the gravity in order to pure associations with the perceived silliness of the older stuff. Meanwhile, most of Jet Li’s 1990s film output has been released in English-only, cut versions, with anything too “weird” or even worse, “foreign” being excised in order not to offend the aesthetic (?) sensibilities of the Western viewer.

With all that preamble, I guess the point is that I watched this early Jet Li film on the uncut, original language DVD (with less-than-perfect, but comprehensible English subtitles), and I really enjoyed it. I don’t want to indiscriminately label all films of this time period and genre as lost classics, because many of them are actually quite boring, others are indeed just too ridiculous, and still others are just hodgepodges, with no discernible unity to them. This film might seem to fall under the last category, as it starts with pure comedy and somewhat unexpectedly transitions to something a bit weightier (although not grim, by any means) about two-thirds of the way through. Although Jet Li had already played Wong Fei-hung and would soon get a little too stuck in his “goody goody” persona, at this point he is still willing to put on the happy go-lucky persona that I saw in Swordsman II, which I watched last year.

That said, Josephine Siao largely steals the show as the mother of Li’s titular character. Her manic energy and frantic delivery is always just one step shy of total overkill, but her performance is ultimately quite effective. What’s more, a surprising amount of pathos arises from a romantic plotline that, for fear of spoiling it, I won’t describe in detail here. Although much of the plot is rather slapstick, there is a certain element of Shakespearean comedy to the proceedings, perhaps paralleled by Chinese precedent as well. Finally, the fight scenes are quite good, not overly-dependent on special effects (as, surprisingly, some kung fu films of this time period are), but not too prosaic either, containing various interesting setpieces, such as one in which two characters fight while using the heads of the audience members as their platforms.

Source: Universe remastered DVD
7 February, 10:30 PM

Kill Zone

(Sha po long)
Yip Wai Sun, Hong Kong / Macau, 2005
2 out of 4 stars

So what happens when you mix the martial arts genre (more recently associated, at least by Western audiences, with the period piece) and the cop genre? At least in this film, the result seems to be some kind of reconstituted slasher film, and I have to admit that I have never been one to get behind the slasher genre. It’s one thing to have some gore in the battle scenes, but some of these characters aren’t even capable of putting up enough of a fight, meaning that many of the “action” scenes are nothing more than slaughters.

In fact, the fighting is quite good in this film, although it is nothing groundbreaking. Although the filmmaking isn’t incompetent, there’s not all that much else to celebrate I about it, and the acting is particularly laughable at times (strong emotions come out of nowhere and then disappear again). My usual complaint in these kind of films is that I am just waiting through the bad acting for the good action, but in this case, I guess I also have to complain about the general nihilism that is the inevitable consequence of veering too far into slasher territory. It seems like the filmmakers wanted to have some kind of weight behind the whole thing, but really, this is an insubstantial picture with a underlying morality that is muddled at best.

Source: Genius DVD
25 January, 10:53 PM

The Mission

(Cheung fo)
Johnnie To, Hong Kong, 1999
2 out of 4 stars

This film does have a reasonable amount of style, but ultimately, it’s not enough to make up for the baffling nature of most of the action, and more importantly, the utter lack of character development. Actually, the film does become fairly compelling in its final sequences, but ultimately this is too small a part of an already short film to make enough of a difference. The action is okay, impressive at times, but the acting is basically not there, even though I’ve at least seen Anthony Wong in other things and know that he can do better when he’s meant to. A bit of a disappointment, to be sure.

Source: Tai Seng DVD
5 July, 7:19 PM

Infernal Affairs II

(Mou gaan dou II)
Andrew Lau & Alan Mak, Hong Kong, 2003
3 out of 4 stars

What a tangled web a studio can weave when they realize they desperately need to make some money off of a sequel to a film that didn’t need one. That’s not to say that this is bad, but it would strike me as an ordinary film even if I hadn’t seen the extraordinary film that came before. This “sequel,” despite the number, is actually a prequel, but it doesn’t so much fill in the blanks as muddy up the waters; it’s often confusing, it’s not always clear if some of the new backstory really squares with the depictions we saw in the first one, and some of the more glaring questions are left unanswered (possibly for film number three). The young replacements the mole characters, previously played by Tony Leung and Andy Lau, are certainly not up to the task. Thankfully, the movie works because Anthony Wong and Eric Tsang reprise their roles as the respective cop and mob boss, and it is quite interesting to learn about a relationship between them that, from what I recall, was far from obvious before. I certainly wouldn’t recommend watching this before the first one, despite the chronology, but I imagine it is worth satisfying the likely thirst for more that you will most likely have after watching the previous film.

Source: Mega Star DVD
6 June, 3:15 PM

Kung Fu Hustle

(Kung fu)
Stephen Chow, Hong Kong / China, 2004
4 out of 4 stars

I wasn’t sure at first, but as I kept going I decided that this film does indeed deserve my very unofficial “best of 2005” title (the 2004 date above is the original Hong Kong release). This film does indeed start slow, like Shaolin Soccer, but not quite as bad, because it’s not so much that the beginning isn’t funny or interesting, as that you don’t know where the hell the plot is trying to go. While the tension I felt near the end of the film was largely eliminated by my knowledge of how the battles would go, I still had to relearn the need to not get hung up by “the plot.”

If anything, I was a little testier with it because this time out, I wasn’t just overwhelmed with glee at the fact that I was actually seeing a Stephen Chow movie in theaters. That said, in retrospect it's clear that the confused plot is part of the humor; the best example being the “epiphany” at the end. I do have to admit that part of this film’s attraction, though, is that someone (Sony Pictures) finally gave Chow a lot of money, so we don’t have any of those dubious attempts at computer graphics seen in Soccer. The movie is quite beautiful, and not just in an “overlook the visual flaws” type of way, either. I would love to say I could recommend this movie to everyone, but a lot of you would probably think I was on crack if you saw it yourself.

Source: Sony DVD
23 May, 11:09 PM

Swordsman II

(Xiao ao jian hu zhi dong fang bu bai)
Ching Siu-Tung, Hong Kong, 1991
3.5 out of 4 stars

Wow! Already, from the first scene, it was clear that the sequel was an immense improvement over the original. Even so, it seemed for much of the film that it was mostly an entertaining but jumbled affair. It’s almost shocking, then, to see the whole thing come together at the end with astonishing force and poignancy, as you realize what all the entanglements have been leading up to.

This film would seem like less of a mess at first if they had jettisoned much of the confusing politics involving Japanese forces, which doesn’t really seem to add to the story and makes it more difficult to figure out who’s who. Everything that’s important has to do with the intricate relationships between the hero, played by Jet Li with a level of both comedy and drama that is surprising considering many of his later, somber/bland roles, the two women in his life, and… a hermaphrodite! You really have to see it to believe it. No one comes away clean or completely admirable with regards to this gender-bending plotline, but the results are fascinating, and the filmmakers go farther with it than you would really expect even for most films today.

As for the action, well it’s still very superhero-ish, much as it was in the first one. In that film, I objected to the supernatural foolishness and hoped for some combat where people would actually hit each other. Surprisingly, however, I enjoyed the same kind of outlandish fights here, which seems to suggest that it wasn’t the concept so much as the execution that I objected to in the previous film. When it comes down to it, I’m really surprised that I can recommend this film so heartily (with the caveat that I can’t guarantee you’ll respond to it the same way).

Source: Tai Seng DVD
16 April, 8:23 PM

As Tears Go By

(Wong gok ka moon)
Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong, 1988

Well, I have “Take My Breath Away” stuck in my head now, for what that’s worth. Conventional and innovative at the same time, but you probably could have guessed that if you’ve read anything about this film or know Wong Kar-Wai. If you haven’t, well, Wong is my own personal representative of the “auteur theory,” actually not very well regarded at the film websites and message boards I frequent, which isn’t really that bad because it makes me feel like I am developing my own wacky pseudo-art-film taste.

Source: Kino DVD
16 March, 8:30 PM