NYAFF ’18: The Brink

Gangsters and fish just seem to go together. It is a connection that goes way back, like when the mob used to control the Fulton Fish Market, until Rudy Giuliani cleaned it out. Over in Hong Kong, scores of supposed fishermen are really part of a gold smuggling operation. Shing is a former trawler who has adapted to crime so well, he usurps the entire operation, but that means he will have to contend with the wildest cop on the Hong Kong force in Jonathan Li’s The Brink (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 New York Asian Film Festival.

A suspect dies while Sai Gui is bringing him in, but he is eventually cleared of criminal responsibility, in the most legalistic sense possible. Of course, nobody wants anything to do with him, including Chan, his strictly by-the-book captain and his partner, A-de, who is literally due to retire tomorrow, so do not get too emotionally attached to him.

For some reason, Sai Gui gets a bee in his bonnet over the gold-smuggling ring Shing runs for the ingrate Shui, who rather arrogantly assumes he can turn over the operation to his entitled son with no consequences. Instead, Shing turns the tables on Shui and son. If Kui, the Triad pulling the strings from his casino cruise ship will except Shing as his new guy, he will be a much more dangerous target for Sai Gui to take down, but the chaotic transition also represents an opportunity for the cop to expose the operation.

So, game on. The Brink is intended to be Max Zhang Jin’s big debut as an action leading man, after he stole the show in Kill Zone (SPL) 2, but it is hard to recognize him with the bleach blond surfer coif he sports this time around. Regardless, he has massive chops. Whenever he goes toe-to-toe with a bad guy, the film is on rock solid ground (even when the action takes place on typhoon-swept fishing boats).

Shawn Yue is nearly as durable and moody as Shing. Frankly, their antagonism might have played better with more personality contrast. Yet, Yue develops some intriguing chemistry with Janice Man (showing some nice chops of her own), as the unnamed protégé Shing’s takes an uncharacteristically protective interest in.

Of course, Yasuaki Kurata struts through the film with authority as the all-business Kui and Gordon Lam adds an element of humanity as the long-suffering Chan. However, the whole point of the film is to showcase Zhang, by letting his fists do the talking. The Brink has its ragged edges, but frankly that is part of its throwback, throw-down charm. Recommended as a watery thrill ride, with absolutely no pretensions, The Brink screens Wednesday night (like Fourth of July fireworks) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYAFF.

Cold War 2: Chow Yun-fat Joins the Franchise

Given the size of its budget and the scope of the operations it conducts, there will always be ambitious people eager to serve as the Hong Kong Police Department’s Commissioner. However, the intricate network of senior-junior relationships makes it tricky to govern. Former Deputy Commissioner M.B. Lee thought he was the man for the job, until his son was arrested for betraying the force, ushering the old man into early retirement. That would seem to be that, but as long as Lee has the Old Boys network and a mysterious scheming patron, he has hope in Longman Leung & Sunny Luk’s Cold War 2 (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Cold War 1 ended with some conspicuous loose threads, including the hijacked emergency response van that remains missing, but the threatening call Commissioner Sean Lau Kit-fai receives would be the most pressing. It turns out there is a reason Joe Lee looks so smug in his prison cell. His accomplices have kidnapped Lau’s wife.

Since he is not a stickler for procedure, Lau is perfectly willing to drag Lee junior to the hand-off. The Commish has no intention of trading him for his wife, but that is how things shake out, with Lau handcuffed to a ticking bomb for extra added embarrassment. Obviously, the operation is an unsanctioned disaster, which turns the legislature into a pack of baying hounds. They are led by the curmudgeonly civil libertarian-ish Oswald Kan. The councilor will not pull his punches with Lau, but he is not a fan of the vested interests Lee represents either.

Although Lee did his duty and arrested his own son, he will turn on Lau during the hearings. Apparently, that was all part of the plan. Lee was not initially privy to the details of the conspiracy, but the high placed government figures backing his son will make him an offer he cannot refuse. Thus begins a three-handed intrigue, as Team Lau and Team Kan work at cross-purposes while trying to investigate Team Lee.

There is more closure in Cold War 2, but it definitely suggests this story has at least another chapter to unfold. The HK box office is sure to support a third installment, but assembling the big name cast again will be a challenge. Obviously, the biggest addition is Chow Yun-fat radiating gravitas as Kan. It follows in the tradition of Chairman of the Board role in Office, but it is arguably informed by Chow’s support for the Umbrella Movement’s student protestors. (When democracy opponents suggested he might be hurting his commercial appeal, Chow replied he’d simply make less money in that case, which is reason enough to go to CW2).

Aaron Kwok’s Lau is as smooth and steely as ever, while “Big Tony” Leung Ka-fai is still massively intense as the combustible M.B. Lee. Now that Eastwood primarily directs, Leung just might be the best squinter and glowerer working in film today. He and Eddie Peng Yuyan really do look like father and son in their brief scenes together. Peng continues to prove he has more chops than his early teen romances suggested. Unfortunately, Charlie Young’s deputy commissioner for PR gets dramatically short-changed this time around, but at least Janice Man gets a serious arc to work with as Kan’s protégé, Au Wing-yan.

There are several big, explosive action sequences in CW2, but Leung & Luk always use them in ways that advance the narrative. It certainly looks like they left plenty of odds and ends to be picked up later, but they steadily ratchet up the tension quite effectively. Altogether, it is a big, slick police thriller, very much in the Hong Kong action tradition. Enthusiastically recommended, Cold War 2 opens this Friday (7/8) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

HK Cinema at SFFS ’14: The Midnight After

It turns out a web novelist by the name of Pizza has captured Hong Kong’s current uneasy zeitgeist with a tale of the Armageddon. As adapted for the big screen, it also involves the challenges of commuting and David Bowie. Hang on tight, because Fruit Chan’s The Midnight After (trailer here) is one heck of a wild ride that screens during the San Francisco Film Society’s annual Hong Kong Cinema series.

Most of the twenty-two Hong Kongers aboard the fateful mini-bus were not planning to be there. Suet, the driver, is covering for a colleague whose wife went into labor. You Chi-chi was anticipating a date with his girlfriend, but she canceled at the last minute. Junkie Blind Fai got on the wrong bus by mistake, whereas the distraught Yuki left a work social outing early after her lecherous boss summarily fired her. Hong Kong is bustling as ever leaving Kowloon, but when they drive through Lion Rock Tunnel towards the New Territories, the teeming masses and incessant traffic mysteriously vanish.

It seems they are the last people left in Hong Kong and the four students who got off at the first stop probably will not last long judging from their sudden symptoms. Trading cell numbers, the core group agrees to reunite in the morning to take stock of the rather dire situation. Soon they are simultaneously receiving bizarre calls that turn out to be the lyrics of Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in Morse Code. Then things really start to get strange, as the apparent apocalypse takes on both metaphysical and science fictional dimensions.

Frankly, we never figure out what is going on with absolute certainty, but we get a pretty good lesson in Hong Kong geography before the zombies show up. Reportedly, the film is also loaded with vernacular puns and wordplay that would even be lost on Mainland audiences, let alone Yankees, but it hardly matters. As it is, Midnight is absolutely bursting with madness.

It is also fully stocked with big named stars, including Simon Yam, naturally playing Wong Man-fat, a low level gangster who more or less assumes leadership of the ragtag group, with characteristic flair. Johnnie To repertory player Lam Suet is also perfectly cast as Suet the driver. Ironically, he probably gets bloodier in Midnight than in his recent To outings. Janice Man (or JM as she is also known, catchy that) is by turns vulnerable and unnerving as the seemingly innocent Yuki. Kara Hui still looks great and maintains plenty of edginess as Mak Sau-ying, a fortune teller-slash-insurance agent determined to do some post-apocalyptic business one way or the other.

Throughout Midnight Chan creates an uncomfortably realistic sense of what the end of the world might really feel like, but unlike Abel Ferrara’s cratering 4:44 Last Day on Earth, he uses it as the foundation of a tense and compelling (though admittedly logic challenged) narrative. Chan Fai-hung and Kong Ho-yan’s adaption of Pizza’s descriptively titled Lost on a Red Mini Van to Taipo nicely balances pitch black humor with moments of deep-seated anxiety-ridden existential drama.

Midinight is unremittingly dark, yet somehow it is still wildly entertaining. It represents a triumphantly off-kilter return to form for Chan, a former stalwart of indie HK cinema who found success producing rom-coms. He certainly doesn’t end the world with a whimper. Highly recommended for a broad cross section of cult cinema fans, The Midnight After screens this Saturday (11/15) as part of the SFFS’s 2014 edition of Hong Kong Cinema.