Johnnie To at MoMA: Sparrow

Kei is no street urchin. However, the pickpocket usually earns enough from his work to leisurely idle away the rest of his time like the smooth gentleman he appears to be. His small four-man crew usually works unobtrusively. Unfortunately, when he notices an enigmatic woman, her crime lord captor notices Kei and his gang in Johnnie To’s Sparrow, which screens as part of MoMA’s ongoing retrospective.

With four razor blades and a few well-timed distractions, Kei, Bo, Mac, and Sak score a tidy but not exorbitant sum. It leaves time for Kei to practice photography with his vintage Rolleiflex on Hong Kong’s picturesque (but sadly disappearing) side streets and out-of-the-way cul-de-sacs. One day Chung Chun Lei steps into his viewfinder, making quite an impression. The next time he sees, Kei tries to follow her, but old sinister Mr. Fu always has eyes on her.

He also has Chung’s passport locked in his safe. It is uncertain how physical their dysfunctional relationship is, but his possessiveness is crystal clear. As a result, his chief enforcer Lung has all four pickpockets badly beaten. Of course, that rubs Kei the wrong way, especially when he figures out why.

In some ways, Sparrow (slang for pickpocket) is a perfectly representative Johnnie To film, featuring several of his regular players, including Simon Yam as Kei and Lam Suet as Lung. Yet, in other ways, it is absolutely atypical. Compared to most of To’s films, Sparrow is relatively quiet. The dialogue is rather sparse, but the soundtrack is spritely and often downright jazzy. Perhaps in an even greater departure, these gangsters never wield guns, but that hardly means anyone is safe.

Despite the noir themes and periodic violence, Sparrow also exhibits a slyly comedic visual sensibility, deliberately echoing the likes of Jacques Demy and Jacques Tati. There are several elaborate sequences that share an aesthetic kinship with dance just as much as action choreography. The climatic pickpocketing challenge is an especially grand crescendo.

Shock Wave 2: Andy Lau Back in the Blast Suit

Frankly, the bomb squad is probably the only department of the Hong Kong Police Force that hasn’t generated complaints for brutality so it makes sense that Andy Lau’s newest film involves bomb disposal. Of course, he has been here before, playing bomb squad Superintendent JS Cheung in Shock Wave. His story was pretty self-contained, but the franchise continues with a thematic sequel, in the tradition of the Overheard films. However, Lau’s new character is much darker and more conflicted this time around in Herman Yau’s Shock Wave 2, which releases today on VOD.

Nobody was better at disarming bombs than Poon Shing-fung, not even his partner Tung Cheuk-man. Tragically, it will be Poon’s career that will be cut short when the two are suddenly engulfed by a hidden bomb, after defusing two explosive booby-traps. Despite a prosthetic leg, Poon exceeds all the physical requirements to return to service, but the brass will only give him a desk job. Soon, Poon is consumed with self-destructive anger and anti-social resentment.

He is also quite suspiciously found knocked unconscious at the site of a hotel bombing. Rather inconveniently for everyone, the resulting shock wave left him in a state of complete amnesia. His old colleagues suspect he was working with the anarchist terrorists known as Vendetta, but we have to believe he was really working under deep-cover to infiltrate them, right?

Believe it or not, the handling of the amnesia angle is somewhat original and pretty intriguing. This being a Herman Yau film, a lot of stuff gets blown-up—in this case, a whole lot. However, the timing of Shock Wave 2’s apocalyptic images of mass destruction terrorism problematically come at a time when the puppet Carrie Lam regime is hyping up the threat of terror to justify Beijing’s draconian National Security Law. Yet, the truth is the law is being applied to forbid Hong Kongers from reading certain books, viewing certain movies, and voting for genuinely democratic candidates—none of which would prevent any of the crimes depicted in this film. As a result, there is a disingenuous vibe to the SW2 and its timing.

Andy Lau gives one of his best performances in recent years, seething with existential rage as Poon. Nevertheless, Lau’s fans have been disappointed by his cautious wait-and-see attitude during the height of the 2019 demonstrations and it was less than thrilling to read he serenaded the CCP at its anniversary bash. Again, seeing him now turn up in a “terrorism” thriller sets off alarm bells.

Benny Chan’s Raging Fire

This film could very well represent the end of an era. It is the final film of Hong Kong action auteur, Benny Chan, who helmed it through production, but had to bow out for post. It could also represent the swan song of the gritty HK cop-and-gangster genre that we know and love. As Xi and the CCP apply the draconian National Security Law to all aspects of HK life, we can expect local film production to increasingly mirror the propaganda churned out on the Mainland. It’s star, Donnie Yen, has publicly sided with the Party against the democracy protesters, so maybe he will be okay with that. Perhaps it is also telling this Yen vehicle is already playing in the PRC, but will open in HK after its American release. The star still has his moves, but the cultural climate has changed drastically (and not for the better) when Chan’s Raging Fire opens tomorrow in New York.

A few years prior, Bong and his protégé Ngo were working a high-profile kidnapping case. With the clock ticking, the two cops divvied up their prime suspects. Ngo’s team managed to beat the location of the victim out of their perp, but then they kept beating him into an early grave. Much to their surprise, the police brass scapegoated them for the entire affair. Now they are out of prison and looking for revenge. For compensation, Ngo’s gang also plans to grab some cash in some spectacularly messy armed heists.

In terms of themes and tone, Raging Fire is a lot like Alan Yuen’s Firestorm, but it doesn’t take things quite as far. Were it not for the presence of Yen, a rather disappointing apologist for HK police brutality against the Umbrella Movement, it probably wouldn’t see release in its current form. In Chan’s screenplay, as he filmed it, the upper echelons of police leadership are shamelessly corrupt. Beating information out of suspects appears to be standard operating procedure and even the stalwart Bong does not appear excessively concerned over collateral damage. (Incidentally, the fraught pregnancy of Bong’s wife is rather lazily manipulative.)

Still, fans will be happy to see Chan, the genre veteran, stages several impressive action sequences. The final hands-to-hand confrontation between Bong and Ngo is especially satisfying. Yen shows his martial arts chops are still finely honed, but dramatically, he is content to coast, as Bong. In contrast, Nicholas Tse is a riveting presence power-brooding and death-ray-staring as Ngo. He makes a great villain, but that somewhat unbalances the film.

Animated Contender: No. 7 Cherry Lane

How could Hong Kong be the site of “anti-colonial” demonstrations in the 1960’s, yet the United Nations refuses to designate it a former colony? Because to do so would entail certain international legal statuses that would be inconvenient for the CCP, so the UN obediently obliges them. This animated feature takes us back to that old pre-Asian Tiger Economies, pre-handover, pre-“National Security” Law Hong Kong. Viewers can revisit SAR when it was very much an assemblage of “local” communities and customs, in Yonfan’s Oscar-contending animated feature No. 7 Cherry Lane, which is currently screening in MoMA’s virtual cinema.

It is an interesting time to live in HK, but as a refugee from Taiwan’s “White Terror,” forty-year-old Mrs. Yu has already seen it all and worse. She and her 18-year-old daughter Meiling, a student and part-time fashion model, settled into a modest but comfortable new life in the North Point “Little Shanghai” neighborhood. However, Meiling was lagging behind in her English studies, so Mrs. Yu hired Ziming, a collegiate English lit scholar, to tutor her.

When he arrives, both mother and daughter find themselves attracted to him, but Ziming asks out Mrs. Yu, the divorcee. Of course, their relationship would be scandalous in 1960s Hong Kong, which is one reason why most of their rendezvouses take place in darkened movie theaters. Ziming also happens to be a fan of Simone Signoret, whose films (like Room at the Top with Laurence Harvey) seem to parallel their own relationship.

The Signoret seen on the movie palace screen becomes a character in her own right, in a very cool way. Shifting from the pastel color palate to an arresting black-and-white, Yonfan portrays her as a literally larger than life diva. Indeed, his use of films like Room and Ship of Fools, as well as novels like Remembrance of Time Past and Dream of the Red Chamber (depicted in a long, surreal, sexually-charged dream sequence) add a lot of depth and texture to the film.

Visually, Cherry Lane is richly distinctive and occasionally very trippy, but it is always grounded in the middle- and working-class neighborhoods of HK. This is the Hong Kong of mom-and-pop shops and corner noodle restaurants. It inspires nostalgia for a bygone era. It is also surprisingly erotic at times and even includes some brief but explicit gay subject matter, so it is hard to see the current Beijing-dominated government embracing this film.

In fact, it shows HK cops racking down hard on protestors. In this case, they were misguided activists inspired by the Cultural Revolution (which the CCP is trying to pretend never happened). Regardless, the Mainland film industry would never produce such an openly sexual film, so enjoy it while you can from Hong Kong.

SFFILM HK Cinema ’20: Still Human

It is a time of blacklists and potential reprisals for Hong Kong artists who support HK’s democratic aspirations and traditional way of life. Anthony Wong Chau-sang has been told he is not on the “official” list, but his job offers from major HK studios still dried up, even before the imposition of the Orwellian “National Security” law. Yet, the world-famous star (who is openly flirting with accepting Taiwanese citizenship) has maintained his high-profile career and artistic integrity in indie films and legit theater. Ironically, he could very well be expressing his progressive values even more now in projects like Oliver Chan Siu-kuen’s Still Human, which screens tomorrow as the opening film of SFFILM’s annual Hong Kong Cinema series.

Leung Cheong-wing is difficult to handle, but it is hard to blame the former construction worker for his bitterness. A freak accident consigned him to a wheelchair, requiring an in-home care-giving (in his tiny “two bed room” flat). The only nurses willing to accept such a gig are from the Philippines, but they never stay long, because of his temper. Evelyn Santos is the latest recruit, but family difficulties back home give her a strong motivation to stay.

Even before the accident, Leung was largely alienated from his family. However, his younger former co-worker Cheung Fai provides a bit of a support network. Initially, Leung is gruffly dismissive of Santos and she tries to play dumb in response, but as anyone who has seen Intouchables or dozens of other films can predict, a rapport starts to grow between them. Soon, the old grouch is even encouraging her dreams of a photography career, sometimes without her even knowing it.

This will probably sound somewhat conventional and predictable to American patrons, but films addressing themes of disability, aging, and immigrant workers (strictly legal in Santos’s case) have considerably more novelty in Hong Kong—and they are likely to get even rarer, given the chilling effect of Beijing’s crackdown on HK liberties. Regardless, Leung is a perfect role for Wong’s talents and sensibilities. Never indulging in mawkish shtick, Wong plays the cranky codger with usual subtlety and complexity. There is a halting, start-stop pace to the development of his relationship with Santos, which gives it credibility.

Filmfest DC ’20: We Have Boots

Today is Independence Day for the United States. Wednesday was the opposite for Hong Kong. 7.5 million Hong Kongers lost their freedom and the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region (SAR) lost its autonomy when the CCP imposed the so-called “National Security” Law, in clear violation of the “One China Two Systems” (1C2S) arrangement. This did not just happen out of nowhere. It is the culmination of a concerted program to violate and undermine the legally-binding Sino-British Joint Declaration. Evans Chan provides the full historical background in the tragically timely We Have Boots, which streams for free through Monday, courtesy of this year’s Filmfest DC.

As soon as Britain and the CCP started negotiating terms of the 1997 transfer, many Hong Kongers (justifiably) feared the worst was inevitable. HK activists were already protesting CCP human rights violations, but Chan identifies the demonstrations in support of imprisoned Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo as a watershed moment. Student activism came to the fore in opposition of the proposed new educational curriculum that was naked CCP political propaganda. That movement was a direct precursor to the 2014 Umbrella Movement (unsuccessfully demanding true universal suffrage, rather than Potemkin elections featuring the CCP’s hand-picked candidates), which in turn spawned the 2019 mass protests against the Extradition Bill.

In short, things have been getting steadily worse and markedly less free in Hong Kong for over ten years. Chan provides context that is often missing from the U.S. media’s superficial coverage. At various times, he establishes the schism between the scrupulously non-violent moderates and the more radical extremes, as well as the split between the 1C2S majority and the genuine pro-independence minority (which is small, but growing, perversely thanks to the thuggish behavior of the HK cops and Beijing’s enforcers).

We Have Boots is not the most elegantly constructed documentary you will see, but Chan marshals a great deal of information to give viewers a comprehensive grounding in the events leading up to where Hong Kong is today. He also clearly establishes the dangers activists face, including the infamous state-sponsored kidnapping of the Causeway booksellers and the rash of mysterious suicides among democracy activists. There are moments that are simply Orwellian, as when activists are charged with “inciting to incite rioting.”

Tribeca ’20: The Last Ferry from Grass Island (short)

TVB is not what it used to be. Recently, pro-democracy viewers and advertisers have started boycotting the Hong Kong network, due to its pro-Beijing, anti-“One China, Two Systems” biases. However, Ah Hoi and his elderly mother Ah Ma still watch the broadcast channel out of habit. Old ways die hard and so do old hitmen in Linhan Zhang’s short film The Last Ferry from Grass Island, which would have screened during the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, had the CCP not covered up the extent of the Wuhan outbreak and falsely denied it involved human-to-human transmission. (Some selections have still been made available for press coverage.)

Ah Hoi is old school. He still speaks Cantonese and watches 1980’s movies, like Police Story (co-starring Last Ferry’s lead actor Tai-Bo). Of course, he does not panic when a young hired gun sneaks onto his fishing boat to cap him, especially when he recognizes she is his former Mainland Chinese protégé, Xiao Ma.

Last Ferry unfolds as a wistfully elegiac slow-burn thriller, but astute Hong Kong watchers will read some between-the-lines commentary regarding the HK localism movement and traditional HK culture. To put it bluntly, this is a film about a Mainlander sent to murder a pre-1997-generation Hong Konger, after all.

To Hong Kong with Love: Ten Years

In Hong Kong, the future may already be here, five years ahead of schedule. Tragically, it is a future of eroding freedoms and intrusive police state tactics envisioned by the filmmakers speculating on what HK life might be like in a decade’s time. Their 2015 anthology film won best film at the Hong Kong Film Awards, despite the condemnation of the Mainland state media. The eerie prescience of Ten Years is undeniable when it screens as part of the Metrograph’s film series, To Hong Kong with Love.

Kwok Zune’s “Extras” is certainly stylish and maybe not as paranoid as it might have seemed five years ago, but the ironic kicker remains obvious right from the start. Two low level triads have been recruited to stage a phony assassination attempt to drum up public support for a draconian “public security” proposal. From the vantage point of 2020, the parallels with the extradition bill are almost spooky. Mike Mak’s stark black-and-white cinematography well serves the darkly cynical morality tale, but it does not land with the same emotional force as some of the later stories.

By far, the weakest constituent film is Wong Fei-pang’s “Season of the End,” in which a duo of cultural anthropologists collect specimens from razed working class neighborhoods in a rather absurdist, Beckett-ish fashion. It is far too reserved and mannered to make any appreciable impact with general audiences.

Fortunately, Jevons Au’s “Ðialect” represents a dramatic improvement. Screenwriters Chung Chui-yi, Ho Fung-lun, and Lulu Yang tell the deceptively simple but heartfelt story of a Cantonese-speaking cab-driver facing the potential loss of his livelihood, because of legal mandates requiring Mandarin fluency. Leung Kin-ping’s terrific performance as the driver is subtle and dignified, but still quite poignant. It is a quiet human story, but it also has direct relevancy for Hong Kong’s Localist movement.

“Dialect” alone would be enough to justify recommending Ten Years, but the courageousness of director-screenwriter Chow Kwuh-wai’s “Self-Immolator” demands to be seen to be believed (and marveled at). Unfolding in pseudo-documentary-style, the POV camera crew tries to undercover the identity of a protestor who indeed self-immolated, apparently in response to the death in prison of hunger-striking independence activist Au-yeung Kin-fung.

Chow explicitly refers to the notorious Falun Gong self-immolations as most likely propaganda operations faked by the CCP and its secret police, while consciously echoing Jan Palach’s self-immolation in Communist Czechoslovakia. It is an amazingly bold work of cinema, but it is also an enormously gripping and suspenseful short film.

Enter the Fat Dragon: Opening in NY but Not China

If Sammo Hung can do it for real, Donnie Yen can certainly pull off similar moves wearing some extra padding. When a hot-shot Hong Kong cop gets reassigned to the property room, he loses his trim physique, but he still has the same skills. The 1978 Hung fan favorite gets a re-whatevering in the portly shape of Wong Jing & Kenji Tanigaki’s Enter the Fat Dragon, which opens this Friday in New York—but not in China, where its theatrical release was canceled due to Xi Jinping’s super-proactive handling of the Coronavirus outbreak.

Initially, Fallon Zhu is the hardest charging cop on the HK force, but when he publicly embarrasses his superiors, he is transferred from police work to evidence warehousing. He is also dumped by his on-again-off-again fiancée, Chloe, a semi-famous second tier TV actress. Sitting around depressed in the property cage day after day leads to a lot of snacking. Despite the weight gain, he is happy to get back into action when he is tapped to escort a prisoner extradited (there’s a sensitive word in Hong Kong) back to Japan.

Of course, his dodgy Tokyo PD contact quickly loses the prisoner, but Zhu gets the blame, so he and his Chinese-Japanese interpreter go careening through Tokyo in search of the fugitive (frankly it often doesn’t look much like Tokyo, but so be it). He will also have the help of his former junior-now senior’s goofy expatriate chestnut-hawking pal Thor. Plus, as fate would have it, Chloe is also in Tokyo to make promotional appearances at the behest of the Yakuza front-man pulling all the strings.

The humor of Fat Dragon is definitely goofy and slapstick, but as his own action director (with choreographers Hua Yan and Tanigaki), Yen composes some gloriously loopy fight sequences that could very well equal those of vintage Jackie Chan movies. There is some incredible athleticism and acrobatics on display, much of which Yen performs wearing Santa Clause padding.

To Hong Kong with Love: Lost in the Fumes

Alas, there is really no suspense to be found in the political campaign this film documents. That is because the Beijing-controlled government of Hong Kong would do anything to prevent the election of an independent-minded (and independence-minded) candidate like Edward Leung. The fix was in, but he and his allies continued to fight the good fight throughout Nora Lam’s documentary profile, Lost in Fumes, which screens as part of the Metrograph new film series, To Hong Kong with Love, inspired by the democracy movement bravely demanding the HK government recognize its commitments to democracy and personal liberties as agreed to in the binding Joint Declaration.

Ironically, CCP propaganda claims the protestors seek to undermine the “One China Two Systems” doctrine, but it really Carrie Lam’s puppet government that has undermined the “two systems” part of the equation. Most of the protestors are advocating a real return to “One China Two Systems.” However, Leung is a different case. He and his Hong Kong Indigenous party were indeed advocating independence, which should have been their right, if Hong Kong were a more democratic system—but it isn’t.

There is a bit of street thuggery captured in the film, but the 2017-2018 period now looks like the calm before the storm compared to the systemic, orchestrated military-style campaigns of police brutality unleashed on the “Yellow” democracy movement in 2019. Yet, throughout the doc, we see the insidious ways Lam’s administration has institutionalized biases against competing political agendas into the fabric of the government. As a result, Leung and his running mates struggle with the dilemma of how their independence party can even stand for election when they must sign a pledge repudiating independence in order to be certified as candidates. For Leung, this is a profound quandary that literally drives him sick, physically and emotionally.

Nora Lam obviously had intimate access to Leung over the course of several years, but the portrait she creates is not slavishly starry-eyed. We definitely see Leung lose confidence and perhaps even start to wrestle with the depression that had plagued him before his activist days. Yet, that is exactly what makes Fumes so powerful. At the time of filming, Leung was only 25 years-old, but he was nearly reaching the point of burn-out. That is the effect Lam and her master Xi were having on the future generations of HK—and that was before they exposed an estimated 80% of the population to toxic tear gas.

Trivisa on Shudder

It is 1997, the year Mainland China and the United Kingdom agreed to the Sino-British Joint Declaration, establishing a separate system of governance for Hong Kong for the next fifty years. Today, both nations are trying to forget 1997 ever happened. As the handover loomed, three notorious real-life gangsters assumed the new regime would crack down on their business. Little did they know the CCP would appoint an HK Chief of Police who was a reputed Triad associate—allegedly—[cough]. Given the mounting uncertainty, they hope to complete one big score—perhaps even together in Frank Hui, Jevons Au & Vicky Wong’s Trivisa, co-produced by the legendary Johnnie To, which premieres today on Shudder.

In 1997, the so-called “The Kings of Thieves” are all at a career crossroads. Kwai Ching-hung has survived as an armed bandit, despite the bloody opening shootout, because he generally focuses on smaller, manageable targets. However, that means he does not have much of a nest egg to fall back on.

In contrast, Yip Kwok-foon has pulled off some spectacularly lucrative jobs, but the resulting heat forced him to retire to the Mainland, where he runs a consumer electronics smuggling operation. It is a profitable business, but he must constantly bribe the Mainland cops, who go out of their way to belittle him.

Cheuk Tze-keung is still pulling off jobs in Hong Kong, but his boredom and arrogance are causing him to be increasingly reckless. Of the “Three Kings,” he is the most interested in the rumor they will be joining forces for an end-of-an-era gig, which did not originate with any of the trio in question. In fact, he starts offering a reward for information on the whereabouts of his other two colleagues, but he is scrupulously careful vetting tips, to keep the cops in the dark.

The Sanskrit title Trivisa is a bit too obscure, but do not let that dissuade you from this jolly dark and ironic gangster thriller. It is a reference to the “three poisons:” greed, anger, and delusion. Consider it the “Three Deadly Sins” instead. Indeed, this film really is about threes, because the trio of co-directors, Hui, Au, and Wong each focused on their own focal character: Kwai, Yip, and Chuek, respectively. Yet, even with the three directors working with their own cinematographers, the film feels very much like a consistent whole.

Margaret Mead ’19: Mong Kok First Aid (short)

Tragically, history has repeated itself this year in Hong Kong. Five years ago, Hong Kongers were stunned when HK police used brutal riot tactics against peaceful protestors. They even targeted emergency medical volunteers. Five years later, the Mainland-dominated (and most likely augmented) police are following the same playbook, but with greater severity. Mavis Siu collects the testimony of eight such medical workers who experienced the crackdown on the 2014 protests first-hand in the short (20 minute) documentary, Mong Kok First Aid, which screens during the 2019 Margaret Mead Film Festival, at the American Museum of Natural History.

The interview subjects all share two conflicting concerns: outrage that the events of 2014 might very well be censored out of Hong Kong’s collective memory and fear that their participation will result in reprisals. Both are well warranted. Although the eight care-givers mostly (but not entirely) supported the democratic goals of the 2014 Umbrella protests, their primary purpose in Mong Kok (and the Admiralty before that) was to provide medical attention. To that end, they even provided aid to injured police officers.

In return, several suffered physical injuries and some were also threatened online by police trolls. Even though the first aid station personnel maintained strict neutrality during the protests, they now face an uncertain future in Hong Kong, simply because their presence could be held against them by the Mainland-controlled authorities.

Line Walker 2: Invisible Spy

You could say the Line Walker feature films are to deep cover operations what the Overheard films are to surveillance details. They do not share the same characters or a continuing narrative, but they address similar themes and feature the same actors. However, in this case, it is the bad guys who have gone deep undercover in Jazz Boon’s Line Walker 2: Invisible Spy, which opens this Friday in New York.

A shadowy international criminal organization is kidnapping children in the Philippines to be groomed and programmed to act as moles in police forces around the world. Apparently, the Hong Kong police force has been compromised, making it rather difficult to solve the mystery of a rash of suicide attacks plaguing the city. However, there might be a big break in the case when Inspector Ching To saves the wary freelance journalist-hacker Yiu Ho-yee from an assassin. Yet, just as he wins her trust, Cheng Chun-yin from the Security Wing sweeps in, claiming jurisdiction over the case and his witness.

Apparently, Yiu’s partner in Burma downloaded a hard drive full of sensitive intel from the conspiratorial organization, so a team will be dispatched to retrieve it. Rather awkwardly, both Cheng and Ching will be under the operational command of Superintendent Yip Kwok-fan, Ching’s current boss and Cheng’s former mentor. Unfortunately, the mission will go down spectacularly badly, in a way that will cast suspicions on both Ching and Cheng, but in very different ways.

Nick Cheung, Louis Koo, and Francis Ng are all back from the original Line Walker film, even though not all of their characters made it through the first feature alive. Although the first feature maintained some tenuous connections to the Line Walker television series, Boon basically shakes the Etch-a-Sketch clear for the sequel. What he keeps, besides the all-star trio, is an abiding interest in the psychological ramifications of operating undercover with an assumed identity. He also continues to stage some adrenaline-charged action sequences, but this time he goes bigger—way bigger. An unforgettable case in point is the final extended smash-up sequence, involving the running of the bulls in Spain, which Boon and action director Chin Ka-lok make the absolute most of.

Yet, perhaps the biggest surprise is Louis Koo. He has certainly played his share of steely gangsters before, notably in Johnnie To films like Election and Drug War, but as Cheng, he projects existential anguish and inner turmoil truly impressive range. Of course, Cheung continues to be one of the hardest hard-nosed action leads in the business, so Inspector Ching To is totally in his wheelhouse. Ng is also perfectly cast as the upright and conscientious Yip, while Zhang Yichi makes quite a creepy (and athletic) heavy as “Demon,” the henchman who becomes the primary antagonist down the stretch.

Admittedly, some of the over-the-top action will have the audience guffawing in disbelief, but you have to give Boon and company credit for their determination to entertain. In fact, the climatic sequences in Spain even rival the noise and fury of Hobbs & Shaw. Recommended for fans of HK action and the three big name stars, Line Walker 2: Invisible Spy opens this Friday (8/16) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

NYAFF ’19: The Fatal Raid

Doesn’t it warm your heart to see cooperation between the different Chinas? In this case, police officers from Hong Kong, Macau, and possibly Taiwan (at least she is teased for being a Taiwanese spy) team up to stop a senior HK cop gone rogue. Madam Fong and her team happen to be women, but they are as lethal as vintage Michelle Yeoh. They will clean up their male colleagues’ mess in Jacky Lee’s The Fatal Raid (a.k.a. Special Female Force 2: The Fatal Raid), which screens during the 2019 New York Asian Film Festival.

Technically, this is a sequel, but don’t worry about coming in cold. Lee quickly catches the audience up on all the back-story they need to know. Frankly, the subtitles for the screener viewed for this review were not great either, but that hardly matters. Fatal Raid is all about action first and attractive women holding guns second. As such, its language is universal.

Twenty-some years ago, before the handover of Macao and Hong Kong, (which the subtitles refer to as the “regression,” perhaps more accurately than was intended), Tam led a secret HK police operation in Macao that turned into a bloodbath. To avoid embarrassment, the top brass covered up the incident and disavowed all claims for compensation from the deceased officers’ next of kin. The titular raid still haunts Tam, so he decides to take advantage of the new deputy commissioner’s first public appearance in Macao to strike. The ultimate objective is a little murky, but there is no missing the slam-bang chaos that ensues.

 So, action. Lots of it. Honestly, Fatal Raid has the energy and tragic sensibility of John Woo films, circa Hard Boiled, with some “chicks-with-guns” fan service thrown in for extra added meathead appeal. Arguably, Jade Leung and company manage to be both feminist role models and guy-friendly eye-candy, but there are so many bullets whizzing through the air, nobody will have a chance to analyze the film’s gender politics.

Leung is pretty darned steely as Madam Fong. Malaysian pop-star Lin Min-chen is also quite engaging as the strait-laced, fast-tracked Yan Han. Likewise, Hidy Yu, Jeana Ho, and Jadie Lin show off some impressive action chops as their colleagues. The brooding is mostly left to the guys, particularly Patrick Tam, who seethes and agonizes as his guilt-ridden namesake.

This is a massively violent film, but it is also a lot of fun. If you imagine the shootout at the end of Michael Mann’s Heat raised to the power of ten and expanded to fill three twenty-minute windows and you might have a notion of what the film is like. Very highly recommended for action fans, The Fatal Raid screens this Friday (7/5), as part of NYAFF ’19.

Jackie Chan in Police Story 2

This is a true sequel, with the same cast returning to play the same characters from the original film, but things would get much looser in future installments of the Police Story franchise. In New Police Story (#5), Jackie Chan plays Chan Kwok-ming and in Police Story: Lockdown he portrays Zhong Wen, who is a Mainland copper rather than a member of Hong Kong’s finest. Here he is still Chan Ka-kui of the most dedicated, but not necessarily smartest officers on the Royal HK force. A lot has changed since 1988, but the fight scenes will still fire up fans in Chan’s Police Story 2, which opens today in a spiffy 4K restoration at the NuArt in LA.

Chan is a dedicated cop, but his enthusiasm sometimes gets the best of him. That resulted in some spectacular property damage in the first film that temporarily has him busted down to traffic cop, even though he collared (and beat the heck out of) the bad guy, crime lord Chu Tao. Rather gallingly, Chu is granted early release on supposedly compassionate grounds. Not surprisingly, he frequently has his goons stalk our man Chan. He can generally handle them, but it will complicate his investigation into a gang of explosive extortionists. Their thuggish harassment of his girlfriend May will also tax their relationship beyond the breaking point.

Like Police Story Uno, the first sequel features some amazing fights. The playground jungle gym fight scene is absolutely vintage Jackie Chan, but the climatic beatdown (with fire-bombs) at the gang’s post-industrial hideout is a truly a dazzler. However, the second film also has much better straight police procedural material, including a nifty sequence in which Chan and the HKPD’s surveillance team shadow a suspect.

Chan is definitely Chan in PS2, as well as his character, Chan ka-kui. Arguably, the first three films in the Police Story franchise are probably most responsible for his international persona (along with Armour of God). He gives up his body for our entertainment, but he also gives as good as he takes in the classic action sequences. Yet, he also develops greater rapport with Maggie Cheung, who is so sweet and innocent as poor May. This time around, their chemistry together is genuinely endearing.

Of course, it still the spectacularly moves and unbelievable stunts that make Story 2 such an enduring fan favorite. At this point in his career, Chan would do anything to please—and the proof is in this film. Required viewing for any martial arts and HK action fan, Police Story 1 and 2 both open today (3/8) in LA, at the Landmark NuArt.

Jackie Chan in Police Story

Back in 1985, Jackie Chan was a proud Hong Konger, rather than a Mainland suck-up. That year saw the release of his first outing as Chan Ka-kui, a model officer of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. In fact, his boss will make him the poster-cop for the department’s recruitment campaign, but his subsequent witness protection assignment brings no end of trouble in Chan’s Police Story, which opens today in a shiny new 4K restoration at the NuArt in LA.

Viewers should have an idea of what to expect from PS1 from the opening action scene. Basically, an entire hillside squatters’ camp is leveled to the ground when Chan chases the slimy crime boss Chu Tao through it. However, Chan is just getting started (as director, character, and action star).

Chu manages to elude Chan’s grasp, but his new assistant Selina Fong is not so fortunate. She has no intention of testifying against her boss, but when the HK brass announces her cooperation, they basically force her hand. Naturally, they assign Chan the supercop to lead her security detail. Unfortunately, Fong will not believe the truth about Chu until it is almost too late, but she will create tons of problems for Chan during the second act, when his naïve girlfriend May mistakenly assumes something intimate is brewing between the cop and the reluctant witness.

If you enjoy fight scenes than Police Story 1 is truly your catnip. Although the film has plenty of Chan’s signature brand of goofy humor, the melee gets pretty brutal, with combatants landing hard on pelvises and tailbones. Much glass is broken during the course of the film, but it all culminates spectacularly in a barnburner of beatdown in a shopping mall, which is just so eighties.

Throughout Police Story, Chan is determined to please and entertain, regardless of the wear and tear on his body. He definitely takes a beating and keeps on ticking. This is classic Chan and Chor Yuen is a classic movie villain as Chu. Frankly, Maggie Cheung is a bit under-employed as May, but Brigitte Lin vamps it up old school as Fong, the pseudo-femme fatale.

Even Jackie Chan’s biggest fans will admit the narrative is just whatever and some of the gags are shamelessly shticky. However, the big action centerpieces are still impressive. It is also quite a vivid reminder of how analog the world was during the mid-1980s. In the case of Hong Kong, it was also freer back then. Indeed, Police Story helps us remember how great the eighties were, back before Jackie Chan sold his soul to the Mainland regime. Highly recommended for all action fans, Police Story 1 and 2 both open today (3/8) in LA, at the Landmark NuArt.

HK Cinema at SFFS ’18: Somewhere Beyond the Mist

This could be the easiest case a Hong Kong police detective ever worked, but it will still take quite an emotional toll. It is a case of parricide that hits close to home for the pregnant police inspector, who is struggling with her dementia-suffering father. Desperate people do horrific things in Cheung King-wai’s Somewhere Beyond the Mist (trailer here), which screens as part of the San Francisco Film Society’s annual Hong Kong Cinema series.

Angela and her husband seem to be doing well, judging by their stylish and relatively spacious (by HK standards) flat, but her father’s erratic behavior is a constant source of embarrassment. In contrast, Connie, a distressingly innocent looking high school student, lives in mean poverty that her stern but lecherous father makes exponentially more unpleasant.

One day, Angela draws the case of a middle-aged couple found strangled and dumped in the High Island Reservoir. It will not be much of a mystery, because Connie will stun the officer with a confession during a routine questioning. It will also be pretty clear why she did it when Cheung flashes backwards to give us lowlights from the young teen’s family life. Of course, she could not do it alone, but she easily manipulates her torch-carrying platonic friend Eric. The real question is the extent to which we consider her a monster and victim.  50/50? 30/70?

Mist is cold as heck, but completely absorbing. Sometimes it is painful to watch, but it is never exploitative or excessively heavy-handed. Frankly, there were at least half a dozen bullying and cyber-shaming films at this year’s NYAFF that were more soul-searing. However, Mist issues a direct challenge, using Angela as an audience proxy to ask just how far removed are we from the miserable and merciless Connie?

Rachel Leung Yung-ting is completely transfixing, profoundly heartbreaking, and totally terrifying as Connie. The impact of her performance is stunning, but it would be a grave mistake to overlook Stephy Tang’s quiet, more subdued work as Angela, because that is where the film’s real bite lies. Cheung gets another remarkable performance from young Zeno Koo, who leaves us even more conflicted with his achingly vulnerable work as poor, pliable Eric.

Best known as a documentarian, Cheung also has an eye for the widescreen, composing shots reminiscent of scroll paintings (shot with icy perfection by cinematographer Shermen Leung Shu-moon), which often relegate the dwarfed characters to a far corner. It is clearly an uncompromisingly auteurist work, but it is also deeply haunting. Recommended for patrons of serious world drama, Somewhere Beyond the Mist screens Saturday and Sunday (9/29 & 9/30) as part of this year’s edition of the SFFS’s Hong Kong Cinema 2018.

The Golden Job: The Young and Dangerous Cast Gets Fast and Furious

Just imagine if Vin Diesel were betrayed by a member of his “family” in the Fast and the Furious franchise. That is about what happens to the other four sworn brothers who make up an elite free-lance team of mercenaries with vaguely criminal roots. It also happens to be a reunion of cast-members from the Young and Dangerous HK films series in its prime, but this is an entirely unrelated narrative. A heist will go down really, really wrong in Chin Ka-lok’s The Golden Job (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

After an assignment for a big pharma company ends in disaster (possibly because the plan is utterly inexplicable), the Fab Five stop sub-contracting for the man and go back to their indie roots, answering only to Cho, their “Papa” in whatever it is they do. Their first operation on their own will be a pro-bono gig, knocking over a truckload newly developed super-medicine, so their leader Lion can deliver it to Dr. Chow, the NGO doctor working in Africa he has been intermittently romancing.

The job went off without a hitch, but when they look in the back of the truck, they find gold bullion instead of medicine. Clearly, leaving the intel and logistics to Bill, the roguish corner-cutting bro, was a mistake. Lion, Calm, Crater, and Mouse all express their disappointment. Inevitably, their confrontation turns into a slam-bang gun fight that seriously wounds Papa Cho. Bill absconds with the gold, which he uses to set himself up as a crime lord in Montenegro. Alas, the rest of his brothers are left holding the bag, but we know there is no way they will leave things that way.

One thing is undeniable, Chin likes to drive fast. Golden Job is not exactly a staggering work of originality, but it aims to please with plenty of energetically staged car chases, shootouts, and multiple old school fight sequences. The action is high octane all the way, with Chin choreographing a number of neat stunts.

As Crater, Jordan Chan broods with ferocious intensity, while Michael Tseng’s Bill chews the scenery with outsider relish. Jerry Lamb’s hacker Mouse is nearly as underwritten as Charmaine Sheh’s Dr. Chow, but who cares? Ekin Chan is still quite charismatic and has mucho action chops as Lion and Calm’s specialty (as played by Chin) is getaway driving, so what more do we need? Plus, Eric Tsang tones down the shtick as Papa Cho. As a bonus, veteran Japanese character actor Yasuaki Kurata gets an unlikely action showcase as Cho’s elderly but still steely Japanese neighbor.

You need no familiarity with the Y&D films to enjoy Golden Job, but you had better enjoy old school throw-downs. It might be an angsty time of betrayal for the “brothers,” but it is a lot of fun to watch. Recommended for fans of classic HK action films, The Golden Job opens this Friday (9/28) in New York, at the AMC Empire.