The Policeman’s Lineage

This Korean cop thriller is based on a Japanese novel and tries for some serious old school Infernal Affairs-style Hong Kong vibes. For third-generation cop, Choi Min-jae, the line between right and wrong is straight as an arrow and clearly demarcated. For his new boss, Park Kang-joon, that line is wavy and fuzzy, but fortunately he always has an innate sense of where it is. Choi is not so sure, which makes his new assignment rather tricky in Lee Kyoo-man’s The Policeman’s Lineage, which releases today digitally.

Choi just blew a prosecution on the stand, because he would not lie or dissemble regarding the rough treatment of the accused. He would not appear to be a good candidate for Kang’s team on paper, but Internal Affairs transfers him, to serve as their undercover source anyway. They know Kang will take Choi, because he has a connection to the naïve cop’s father.

It turns out the death of Choi’s father remains surrounded in rumors and innuendos. Both Kang and AI will try to play him, by promising to reveal all. However, as Choi fils pursues his investigation of Kang, he finds plenty of controversy and departmental politics, but not the smoking guns he expected.

Lineage does not quite rank with the best of Korean thrillers, but for the most part, it is respectably hardboiled and entertainingly cynical. Bae Young-ik’s adaptation of Joh Sasaki’s novel tries a little too hard to over-complicate the narrative and all the behind-the-scenes secret cabal maneuvering sometimes feels a little too pat and forced.

21 Bridges: Boseman Protects and Serves

In this street-smart New York manhunt thriller, the cops deeply resent the grandstanding mayor, who has often thrown them under the bus. Yes, you can definitely say it is “ripped from the headlines”—recent headlines. We soon suspect a cabal of dirty cops could be the ultimate cause of all the trouble, so it is also ripped from 1970’s Serpico era headlines as well. Det. Andre Davis has a reputation for unholstering his firearm, making him the perfect point-man to track down two desperate cop-killers, but he turns out to be more of a loose cannon than anyone bargained for in Brian Kirk’s 21 Bridges, which opens today nationwide.

Ray Jackson and Michael Trujillo thought they had been recruited to steal 30 kilos of cocaine, but they find 300 kilos instead. For them, that is way too much of a “good thing.” Almost immediately thereafter, a firefight ensues with four Brooklyn cops, who did not arrive responding to any calls, before getting blown away by the better armed criminals. Subsequently, they fatally shoot four more officers legitimately dispatched to the scene, fleeing into Manhattan, in search of a buyer and a money-launderer. It is a mess that the local precinct captain and the deputy chief want Davis to clean up—permanently.

Given the considerable quantity of uncut coke recovered, local drug squad detective Frankie Burns will ride shotgun with Davis, whether he likes it or not. She seems tough enough, but many of her trigger-happy colleagues keep getting in his way. Nevertheless, Davis steadily closes in on his targets, thanks to his strategy the useless mayor agrees to implement. Every tunnel, train, ferry, and bridge (yes, all 21 of them) providing access out of Manhattan will be locked-down from 1:00 to 5:00 (so as not to interrupt the financial markets).

Basically, screenwriters Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan want the audience to hate cops. However, their propaganda campaign is sabotaged by the steely but charismatic performance of their star, Chadwick Boseman. His intense screen presence is still acutely human, winning over viewer’s sympathy and largely carrying the film. Boseman and Sienna Miller, as Burns, nicely play good cop-bad cop together, but it is debatable which is which.

Line of Duty

There is nothing the media enjoys more than tearing down police officers. An internet wannabe like Ava Brooks hardly qualifies as media, but she certainly shares all their biases. However, she will learn just how dangerous it can be to serve as a uniformed officer in Steven C. Miller’s Line of Duty, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Officer Frank Penny was officially cleared of wrong-doing in a prior shooting incident, but his career has still suffered. He really was blameless, but he remains wracked with guilt, due to the acutely agonizing circumstances. He walks a beat these days, fatefully putting him in the perfect place to intercept a fleeing kidnaping suspect.

Unfortunately, Penny is forced to shoot the perp before he can disclose any information on the victim’s whereabouts. Awkwardly, she happens to be the daughter of the police chief. As a further complication, Brooks captures the entire shooting on her live-cast, as well as Penny’s subsequent dressing down. Of course, he goes rogue to rescue the young girl and she does her best to keep up with him, until things start getting violently real. Soon, the odd couple realizes they will have to work together to save the victim and stay alive.

If Line of Duty had been released during the peak of premium cable movie channels, it would have been a mainstay that we would have frequently re-watched. It is no classic, but it is slick, professional, generally reassuring, and highly watchable. Frankly, it is enormously refreshing just to see such a positive portrayal of a police office on-screen. Penny is no superhero, but Aaron Eckhart’s lead performance and Jeremy Drysdale’s screenplay cast him in an acutely human light that actually makes him more sympathetic than an unrealistically perfect action hero.

Fantasia ’19: Extreme Job

Being a small businessman is not so different from being a cop. Both have a tough time making ends meet and the bottom-feeding media is only too happy to score cheap points against either. At least independent proprietors can be their own boss. That is why narcotics team leader Go will be tempted to make it permanent when he goes undercover as a purveyor of fried chicken in Lee Byeong-heon’s Extreme Job, which screens again during the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Go’s team made a real hash of their last case, so if they do not rack up some high-profile collars quickly, they are likely to be disbanded. The five misfit cops decide to follow a rival squad leader’s tip, staking out long-suspected drug kingpin Lee Moo-bae’s new hideout. There is definitely illegal business going on behind closed doors, but the chicken shop they have been using to monitor Lee’s gang is about to go out of business. In the spirit of all or nothing, Go uses his pension fund to buy it out.

Of course, they will have to sell some chicken to keep up appearances. Oddly enough, Det. Ma, the compulsive gambler and general foul-up, happens to have a knack with chicken. In fact, his chicken with rib marinade becomes a foodie sensation. Suddenly, Go and his team are too busy filling orders to do much police work, which frustrates the hard-charging veteran and the idealistic newbie. However, things take a surprise turn when the media starts nosing around.

Extreme Job is one of the relatively rare South Korean comedies that translates quite well for American audiences. Of course, it does not hurt that there is quite a bit of action, including a massive beatdown climax. However, it really works because Lee Byeong-heon and screenwriter Bae Se-young take a clever premise and fully develop it. They do not simply milk a few chuckles out of the prospect of cops distracted by their own chicken-slinging cover. This Macguffin takes on a life of its own.

It is also amusing to see Ryu Seung-ryong, the grizzled star of films like The Target, The War of the Arrows, and The Front Line, playing such a sad-eyed, snake-bit underdog. He still shows off plenty of action chops down the stretch. Although he is more than a bit annoying at first, rubber-faced Jin Seon-kyu also develops some roguish charm as the culinary-skilled Ma.

Thanks to the game cast (Go’s Fab Five), Extreme Job has quite a bit of genial charm. It is easy to see why it broke Korean box office records and has Kevin Hart kicking the tires of a potential American remake. It is just a lot of easy-going fun, somewhat in the spirit of the original Beverly Hills Cop and Stakeout movies. Recommended for fans of cop comedies, Extreme Job screens again next Wednesday (7/31), as part of this year’s Fantasia.

Tribeca ’19: Crown Vic

For decades, Ford Motors has been the unchallenged dominant manufacturer of police cars. The Crown Victoria Police Interceptor was the primary reason why. They had a powerful V8, easy handling, and were cheap to repair. It is easy to figure why taxi owners liked to buy the decommissioned cruisers. The LAPD is now phasing out the classic four-door, probably replacing them with hybrids constructed with recycled plastic and good intentions. Officer Ray Mandel is old school when it comes to cars and everything else. His trainee will also appreciate having the Interceptor’s crash-resistant body out in front of them during his long, dark first night on the job in Joel Souza’s Crown Vic, which premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.

Mandel will not haze Nick Holland per se, but he definitely gives him plenty of snark and bark. Rather remarkably, Holland has never seen any action, even though he transferred from Oakland. He is about to get what he asked for, in full force. The night starts with some comically ugly cases, but it will get progressively darker. Mandel might be flexible when it comes to details, but he isn’t crooked. The same cannot be said with confidence of Jack VanZandt, a steroid-raging undercover cop who will be riding in Mandel’s zone this fateful night.

Yes, of course you are thinking Training Day for obvious reasons. However, Mandel will go maverick in very different ways than Denzel Washington did. In fact, we are largely willing to follow him, because of all the escalating hassles and mayhem Souza puts them through. Of course, it defies logic that the two cops could be involved in so many incidents, several of which involving shots fired, without bothering with any reports whatsoever. However, Souza’s narrative is intended as a microcosmic depiction of every that can possibly go wrong in a cop’s night, so go with it.

Thomas Jane has done some interesting work lately in films like 1922 and Before I Wake, but this is still a showcase for him that will surprise people. Somehow, he manages to be simultaneously ferocious and subtle as the hardboiled Mandel. Jane sets off so many fireworks, he largely overshadows Luke Kleintank as freaked out Holland, but he makes the most of it when his rookie character snaps. Josh Hopkins is a spectacular mess as VanZandt, starting out completely off the rails and constantly careening further out of control, while David Krumholtz is quite a creepy little weasel as his bad news partner.

Souza and company do not necessarily want us to be reassured by the prospect of cops like Mandel on the street, but they do try to help us understand their reality. They endure a lot of stress and danger for very little thanks. The Interceptor keeps rolling, but it is a tense ride, which cinematographer Thomas Scott Stanton shoots with the perfect Edward Hopper-from-Hell late-night light and shadow. Highly recommended for fans of cop movies, Crown Vic will definitely come back around after premiering at this year’s Tribeca.

Assassin’s Code: To Live and Die in Cleveland

You could say it is like a “creed.” Supposedly, hitman Kurt Schlychter plies his trade according to rigid framework of ethics, but it is hard to pick up on it, until he flat out tells us late in the third act. Throughout most of the film, he acts perfectly willing to cap anyone Cleveland’s secret crime boss pays him to off. Thanks to Schlychter, Angelo Leonetti successfully kept his real business on the down-low, but blundering rookie cop Michael Connolly could very well mess-up the arrangement in David A. Armstrong’s The Assassin’s Code (trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

Technically, Connolly’s father died while on duty, but the suspicious circumstances ruined his reputation. Yet, instead of a supervillain or a vigilante, he follows in his old man’s footsteps, becoming a shunned and despised Cleveland police detective. Captain Jack O’Brien, his father’s former partner, assigns him busywork, but he manages to land the case of a hijacked police evidence truck filled with meth, by being in the right place at the right time.

Thanks to some guidance from Laura Consolo, the public prosecutor, Connolly focuses on Leonetti right from the start. Unfortunately, Schlychter keeps killing his witnesses. He also starts keeping tabs on Connolly’s wife Jia, a cellist on the Cleveland symphony that just so happens to be bankrolled by city benefactor, Angelo Leonetti.

Armstrong seems to be going for the vibe of Andrew Davis’s Code of Silence, one of the more ambitious Chuck Norris movies of the mid-1980s that combined high-flying action with realistic crooked cop intrigue. Unfortunately, Justin Chatwin is a little too nebbish as Connolly and Peter Stormare is so flamboyantly weird as Schlychter, it never really convinces us. Plus, Stormare has a scene in which the hitman chronicles his grandfather’s reluctant service as a German grunt in WWII to the utterly baffled Jia Connolly that is amazingly tonally wrong, in about half a dozen ways.

Still, the film is relatively gritty and both Elizabeth Anweis and Mark Thompson (former co-host of the once-popular Mark and Brian radio show) are quite strong as Jia Connolly and Captain O’Brien. It is a bit mind-blowing to see Witchblade’s Yancy Butler turn up as the long-stymied Consolo, but she isn’t bad lecturing Connolly. As a pleasant surprise, Assassin’s Code is nicely supported by a stylish crime-jazz-influenced soundtrack, featuring trumpet solos by Chris Tedesco and saxophone solos by Ian Roller.

Assassin’s Code is definitely a grubby B-movie, but it is Cleveland’s grubby B-movie. The screenplay by Edward Lee Cornett and Valerie Grant is a mostly by-the-numbers affair, but there is a bit of style to Armstrong’s execution. It sounds good, even when it behaves somewhat slow-wittedly. We have seen worse, but you can safely wait for it to stream on Netflix or whatever. For those determined to represent for Cleveland, it opens today (5/11) in LA at the Arena Cinelounge and in Jersey at the Williams Center Cinema.

McDonagh’s War on Everyone

Finally, it is time to let police brutality be fun again. We learned in the 1980s the more reckless the enforcement of justice, the greater the deterrent effect will be. Sadly, we have lost track of that wisdom in recent years, but British filmmaker John Michael McDonagh brings it all flooding back in the tongue-in-cheek War on Everyone (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Bob Bolaño and Terry Monroe are cops who have done suspiciously well for themselves and dare anyone to call them on it. At least they are scrupulously liberal—they never discriminate when killing drugs dealers and confiscating their loot—so their boss, Lt. Gerry Stanton covers for them to an extent. Through traditional police work, the partners get wind of large scale heist in the works, but rather than foil it, they plan to hijack the spoils for themselves. However, they do not yet realize the score has been masterminded by James Mangan (also the name of the lead character in McDonagh’s short The Second Death), an expatriate British lord and gangster.

While putting the squeeze on various low-level accomplices, Monroe manages to steal away the girlfriend of the gang’s Quaker getaway driver. Unfortunately, their primary snitch double-crosses them, forcing them to follow his trail to Iceland. They continue to flail around like bulls in the proverbial china shop, unaware Lord Mangan is about to get serious.

Basically, War-on is like a more grounded version of the vintage 1980s cult sitcom Sledgehammer! Just like the short-lived TV series, its broad satire backfires, making the Lethal Weapon attitudes and violence look appealing instead of unreasonable (also thanks in no small measure to Lorne Balfe’s evocative old school funky themes and riffs).

Despite being the ostensible leads, Michael Peña and Alexander Skarsgård function (gamely enough) as straight-men for the madness around them (some being of their making, some not). Frankly, Paul Reiser gets the biggest laughs as the harried Lieutenant and McDonagh regular (going back to Second Death) David Wilmot does his Irish Marty Feldman thing as reluctant informer Pádraic Power. Tessa (“Creed”) Thompson and Stehpanie (“Miss Bala”) Sigman add energy and provide the only remotely intelligent presences as Monroe’s new lover Jackie Hollis and Bolaño’s wife Delores, respectively.

Although nowhere near as rich and satisfying as McDonagh’s The Guard and Calvaary, War-on is breezy, humorous, and not the least bit convincing as an act of social commentary, which is rather happy news from a viewer’s perspective. It is also one of the few films that spends significant time in both Albuquerque and Iceland, so it has that going for it too. Recommended for fans of 1970s and 1980s cop movies, War on Everyone opens this Friday (2/3) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Asura: The City of Madness—Hwang Jung-min Unleashes his Inner Mayor Daley

In the U.S., they say there is even more corruption on the local governmental level than the Federal, because that is where all land use decisions are made. The same seems to be true in Korean—and Mayor Park Sung-bae is glad of it. He is determined to get all the prime cuts from a plan to redevelopment a former U.S. military base in fictional Annam. Of course, he has plenty of other nefarious side businesses, including a large meth dealing operation. For years, Det. Han Do-kyung has done the mayor’s dirty work, but an ambitious prosecutor will force him to either double down or turn state’s evidence in Kim Sung-soo’s spectacularly cynical Asura: The City of Madness (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

In his world-weary voice-overs, Han refers to himself as the mayor’s “gun-dog.” He means it the way it sounds. Having done some pretty despicable things for his boss (who also happens to be his cancer-stricken wife’s half-brother), Han is poised to accept a position in City Hall as his reward. Unfortunately, things fall apart rapidly when an equally venal but less connected fellow cop interrupts him paying off the junkie who recently kidnapped a witness against the mayor. During the resulting scuffle, Han accidentally kills the crooked copper, forcing him to frame his drug-addled lackey to save himself.

To further complicate Han’s life, prosecutor Kim Cha-in starts blackmailing Han to inform on Park. Facing his wife’s impending mortality has made Han remorseful for choosing the crooked path. However, he can tell Kim is no Fritz Bauer or Rudy Giuliani. In fact, he might be just as ruthless and sociopathic as Park.

Asura (rather poetically named after constantly warring Buddhist demigods) makes recent Korean political corruption thrillers like Inside Men and A Violent Prosecutor look like The Smurfs. No mere ward-heeler, Mayor Park is practically the Devil incarnate. Of course, the flamboyantly devious pol is totally in Hwang Jung-min’s wheelhouse. He gleefully gobbles down the scenery and delivers insanely villainous pronouncements like Mussolini on the balcony. In contrast, Jung Woo-sung is relatively restrained, but watching the cumulative punishment of all the smack-downs he endures also represents quite a compelling performance, but one of a wholly different order.

Amidst this world of shady characters, Kwak Do-won also stands out as the cold-blooded Kim Cha-in. If you are looking for subtlety here, your best bet is Jeong Man-sik, who brings some finer gradations to Do Chang-hak, Kim’s lead investigator, at least when he is not beating on poor, degraded Det. Han.

Tight, tense, and bracing like iced black coffee, Asura could be the least sentimental film of the year. Kim Sung-soo never gives viewers anyplace to hide, but he pays them off with third act mayhem worthy of Johnnie To at the top of his game. Very highly recommended for action and procedural fans, Asura: The City of Madness opens today (10/14) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

AAIFF ’16: Polis Evo

The cars are flashy, the bullets are plentiful, and the women are demurely veiled. Prepare yourself for some bickering buddy-cops, Malaysian style. At least those cars are fast. The same cannot be said for the wits of Inspector Sani, a conciliatory slacker on the Terengganu police force. His quiet life will be upended when he is partnered up with Inspector Khai, the notorious “Supercop” on assignment from K-L. When not bickering and bantering, they will work together to bring down a nasty meth ring in Ghaz Abu Bakar’s Polis Evo (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Asian American International Film Festival in New York.

First of all, we have to give Peninsular Terengganu credit for issuing some pretty slick wheels to their officers. Sani and Khai will put them to good use. Khai was dispatched to follow up a lead in Sani’s normally sleepy jurisdiction as a way to force him to slow down a little after his latest massive smackdown. Apparently, Sani’s old high school science teacher Adli Hashim went Walter White to pay off debts, but when he refused to cook up the lethally pure batch demanded by the gang leader, he turned up dead himself.

The stakes start to rise when the gang tries to knock off Adli Hashim’s daughter, for whom Sani long held a torch. However, things really start to get messy when the bad guys launch a full-scale attack on the hospital she is recuperating in. Even Sani will have to admit something is amiss given the level of destruction.

Fortunately, there are several spectacularly in-your-face action scenes that should be catnip for fans, because the corny dialogue is not going to get the job done on its own. Frankly, it rips off dozens of 1980s odd couple cop movies, successfully copying the energy, but not the wit. The opening gag in which Sani catches a beady-eyed peeper ogling his sisters without their headscarves is particularly clumsy, especially considering what the implications might be for all parties in real life. Conversely, when Khai and Sani’s oldest sister Anis start falling for each other, the film is rather sweetly chaste. Ain’t nobody jumping into bed together, that’s for sure.

Rugged and taciturn works quite well for Shaheizy Sam’s Inspector Khai. He is the sort of hard-charging cop we can always appreciate. As his requisite opposite, Zizan Razak spreads the shtick around pretty thick, but he serviceably gets down to action business in the third act. Nora Danish is also appealingly upbeat as the assertive Anis. We just wish she could be even more progressive.

Ghaz (as he is largely known in the biz) has a knack for livening up car chases. If he ever teams up with a screenwriter who has a better ear for one-liners, he could make quite an international name for himself. PE has its weaknesses, but it is still definitely worth seeing for the tightly executed action sequences and the Malaysian flavor. Recommended with the above caveats, Polis Evo screens this Saturday (7/23) at the Village East, as part of this year’s AAIFF.

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.

NYAFF ’16: Maverick

There is usually a good reason why those “unwritten rules” are not officially codified on paper. The specifics are rather awkwardly embarrassing, but the benefits usually assure compliance. Rookie copper Yeh Ming Xian is not inclined to play that game. He still has his idealism and his self-respect. Consequently, most of his bent colleagues bitterly resent him, but his earnestness might bring Yang “Brother Ming” Cheng back from the dark side in Cheng Wen-tang’s Maverick (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 New York Asian Film Festival.

A little bit of hazing is not so shocking, but several of Yeh’s seniors get rather boorish about it. They clearly realize how bad he makes them look. The die is probably cast during the first operation Yeh participates in. He thought they were taking down a gambling den, but when they encounter “Black Money,” the powerful city council president’s entitled son passed out in a pool of drugs and cash, the cops decide they were just out for a scenic drive. Nothing to see here, move along.

Of course, Yeh is not inclined to go along with their corruption. To make matters worse, he turns up evidence linking the politician to a number of crimes as part of his clerical archival work intended as punishment. Brother Ming better understands the kind of people Yeh is antagonizing. He has assumed the loan shark debts of his hostess girlfriend Ann’s deadbeat brother. Brother Ming has been thoroughly compromised for years, but he might decide it is finally time to cowboy up when he sees the consequences Yeh faces.

Maverick is sort of like a Taiwanese Walking Tall or High Noon, except Yeh’s defiance is portrayed in much more matter-of-fact, workaday terms. Rather than a crusade against injustice, it is more about his refusal to debase himself and the slow reawakening of Brother Ming’s principles. Yet, that sort of makes the film even more satisfying.

You Sheng and Kaiser Chuang are both low-key understated brooders, but they still make a terrific buddy-cop pairing. Chuang’s Brother Ming in particular has a bit of that gritty, old school 1970s Sidney Lumet thing going on. He also develops some shockingly poignant chemistry Jian Man-shu’s Ann. Their world-weary relationship darned-near steals the picture. However, Yang Lie’s sinister scenery chewing as the council president consistently pulls us back into the crooked cop narrative.

Maverick is considered the second of Cheng’s planned thematic trilogy addressing problematic criminal justice, following up Tears. Frankly, it is utterly baffling and altogether unjust that film did not screen more widely in North America, because it is also a quiet knockout punch. Perhaps when all three films are available they will reach some sort of critical mass. Although Maverick is more upbeat, it is just as smart as its predecessor. It should leave viewers eagerly anticipating the third film. Highly recommended for fans of sophisticated policiers, Maverick screens this Sunday (7/26) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYAFF.

NYAFF ’16: Twisted Justice

Mike Bloomberg would approve of the way Chief Inspector Yoichi Morohoshi takes care of business in Hokkaido. The questionable copper will make alliances with the Yakuza, deal speed, and completely disregard civil liberties in order to “keep guns off the streets.” Don’t you feel so much safer knowing he is based on the real Yoshiaki Inaba? The convicted cop’s memoir has now been adapted as Kazuya Shiraishi’s Twisted Justice (trailer here), the opening night selection of the 2016 New York Asian Film Festival, starring Rising Star Asia Award Winner Go Ayano.

The only reason the Hokkaido police recruited Morohoshi was for his judo skills. He held up his end of the bargain, leading their team to its first championship. However, if he hopes to make it on the Sapporo force, he will have to start scoring better on the competitive point system. The highest points are awarded for the recovery of any sort of gun that can be directly linked to a criminal. That obviously creates an incentive to plant guns on random lowlife fall guys. Of course, to do that, Morohoshi will need an illicit source of firearms. Fortunately, a local small time Yakuza and his Pakistani contractor are more than willing to help, in exchange for Morohoshi’s protection.

Following this strategy, with some degree of wink-wink-nudge-nudge approval from his superiors, Morohoshi rides high for years. Inevitably, the party will end, most likely with a bang rather than a whimper. Nevertheless, Morohoshi will survive to be banished to the Yubari hinterlands, but this corrupt cop just doesn’t know when to quit.

Beyond the spot-on period trappings, Twisted has a gritty, grimy 1970s vibe that recalls classics like Friedkin’s The French Connection, Shohei Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine, and Kinji Fukasaku’s Cops vs. Thugs. However, there is nothing glamorous about Morohoshi’s debauchery. In fact, Shiraishi makes it uncomfortably clear Morohoshi’s corruption leads to debasement rather than empowerment. Seriously, you do not want to be him.

Still, you have to admire the way Ayano dives into Morohoshi’s depraved and erratic persona. He fully commits to all the excesses and humiliations. Thanks to his work, Twisted becomes an epic of personal self-destruction. However, Pierre Taki scene-stealing reaches kleptomaniacal levels as the hedonistic Det. Sadao Murai, the old, slightly crooked salt, who first shows Morohoshi how to bend the rules to his advantage. Likewise, the performance of Gravure (pin-up) Idol-turned actress Haruna Yabuki as the hostess-lover Morohoshi leads even further astray is nakedly open and honest, in every sense.

It really is mind-boggling how much gangster behavior is condoned and even committed all for the sake of confiscating a few firearms. You do not have to be a member of the NRA to consider it madness, but you might consider joining by the time Shiraishi’s epic concludes. Living up to its title, Twisted is a sweeping indictment of public safety claims used to justify terribly venal forms of graft. It is also a relentlessly slick barn-burner that never compromises or waters-down its ripped-from-the-headlines subject matter. Highly recommended, Twisted Justice screens this Wednesday (6/22) and next Tuesday (6/28) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYAFF.

Old School Kung Fu ’16: Big Bullet

Evidently, Hong Kong was a city almost entirely without cell phones in 1996. That would change in a hurry, but their aptitude for action films remains undiminished. In 1996, Benny Chan was also relatively new to the action genre, but his reputation was quickly transformed with Golden Harvest’s release of Big Bullet (trailer here), which screens this weekend as part of Subway’s Cinema’s Old School Kung Fu 2016, with the support of Warner Archive, who have included the HK policier in their series of Golden Harvest classics on MOD (manufactured on demand) DVD (to order, fans must visit The Warner Archive Collection: warnerarchive.com).

After the wildly incompetent and possibly slightly bent Inspector Guan leads his major crimes team on a nearly disastrous raid, soon-to-be Sgt. Bill Chu subsequently explains his disappointment with his fists. Unfortunately, it will be Chu who is busted down in rank and transferred to an emergency response team. However, his reputation proceeds him. Most of his new team members are in awe of the in/famous cop, but not the strictly-by-the-book Jeff Chiu.

Naturally, their contrasting temperaments will lead to conflict when Chu starts pursing Bird and the Professor, two hardcore gangsters who killed his best friend during their freshly launched crime spree. Technically, they are Guan’s case, but he refuses to heed any of Chu’s warnings. That forces Zhu and his team to go rogue, which is fine with most of them.

Big Bullet is a perfect example of how super-slick, uber-stylish execution can make a workaday narrative shine like a diamond. Although there is plenty of fighting, it isn’t what you usually consider a Kung Fu movie, but whatever. The important thing is the action sequences are big-picture in scope but clearly and tightly staged. They all look great on-screen.

It is pretty crazy to watch a relatively young Sean Lau Ching-wan kicking butt as Chu. In a nod to reality, the soon-to-be-late Inspector Yang (played by ever reliable Francis Ng) tells him he is getting a little “stocky” for a cowboy-copper. Maybe so, but he is still all kinds of steely. It is also pretty nuts taking in the now stately Anthony Wong as Bird, the psycho-sleaze, but he is as intense as usual. However, it is Theresa Lee who steals a bunch of scenes as Apple, the girl-next-door patrol officer with mad martial arts skills. She adds the right amount of comic relief, whereas Spencer Lam slightly overdoes it as their Dan, the old veteran of their emergency response van.

Chan really earned his spurs with some massively-charged but totally street level and almost realistic action sequences. He keeps raising the stakes and boosting the adrenaline quite deftly. Of course he had the advantage of what now looks like an incredible all-star cast, who will not disappoint their more recently converted fans. Totally recommended for action connoisseurs, Big Bullet screens this Friday (4/8) and Sunday (4/10) as part of Old School Kung Fu at the Metrograph and is available for sale online at Warner Archive.

PIFF ’16: Marshland

It is 1980 in Spain—a time when all able bodied men were required to carry moustaches. The nation was also in the midst of transitioning to a more democratic form of government, which was all very nice, but rather inconvenient timing for homicide detective Juan Robles. He has been dispatched to the rural south to find missing twin girls, but finds evidence of a depraved serial killer instead. He would like to cut his usual corners, but his crusading partner and CYA-ing superiors will force him to do things the hard way in Alberto Rodríguez’s Marshland (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Portland International Film Festival.

Initially, Robles and reform-minded Pedro Suárez treat the disappearance of Carmen and Estrella as a missing person case, but they find their bodies all too quickly. More unsettling, they are soon presented with circumstantial evidence linking the murder of the twins with the deaths or disappearances of several other local girls. They all went missing around the time of the annual carnival and each were somehow linked to the village’s sleazy lothario, “Quini” Varela. However, Varela’s blood type is different from what was recovered from the bodies—and he seems to know it.

As Robles and Suárez pursue Varela’s accomplice, differences in their methods and backgrounds lead to conflict. Suárez is currently out of favor within the police establishment, because of an open letter he sent to the newspapers protesting departmental corruption. On the other hand, Robles’ long tenure of service under Franco makes him highly suspect.

With Marshland, Rodríguez steps up his game tremendously from the disappointingly middling Unit 7. While staying within the police procedural sub-genre, he shows a mastery of mood and fully capitalizes on the lonely but cinematic wetland backdrops. If not exactly a whodunit per se, the particulars of their case are highly compelling. By the standards of Spanish cinema, it is also relatively reserved in its Franco-era score-settling, mostly using the legacy of the old regime to create tension for the reluctant partners.

Javier Gutiérrez is total dynamite as the roguish old tougher-than-he-looks Robles. Wiry like a coiled spring, he might be fun to drink with, but he is all kinds dangerous. Gutiérrez convincingly conveys his charismatic charm and the ruthlessness he can turn on like a light switch. Raúl Arévalo does his best to keep up, but Suárez’s goody-two-shoes persona is no match for Robles’ grand complexities. However, Salva Reina adds some nice salty flavor as Jesús, the rustic outcast who becomes the coppers’ guide through the treacherous marshes.

Unlike the problematically slack Unit 7, Marshland is tight and tense the whole way through. It is a ripping good thriller, executed with stylish bravado. Recommended for mainstream fans of cop-and-serial killer movies, Marshland screens this Friday (2/19) and next Monday (2/22), as part of this year’s PIFF (and by the way, it’s also already available on DVD).

Ryoo Seung-wan’s Veteran

Seasoned Detective Seo Do-cheol served as a technical advisor to a TV cop show, but he is not about to go Hollywood. Frankly, he is too undisciplined for any sort of corruption. While he is no end of headaches for his frustrated wife and task force leader, he is the last cop any bad guy would want on his case. A coked-up sadistic corporate heir will learn that the hard way when he messes with a friendly acquaintance of Seo’s (Hell yes, that’s all it takes) in Ryoo Seung-wan’s Veteran (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, after laying a smackdown on this year’s TIFF.

After busting a high-end car theft ring Det. Seo and team leader Oh are poised for national promotion. Of course, the car thieves did not give up without a fight, but that was A-OK with Seo. If he can keep quiet for next month or so, he’ll be moving on up. Unfortunately, he meets the reprehensible Jo Tae-oh at a party for the TV show he basically lent his name to. Watching his abusive behavior towards women rubs the cop the wrong way. When he subsequently learns the truck driver he contracted during the stolen car sting tried to commit suicide at the Sunjin Group, Jo’s perennially under-investigation conglomerate, Seo launches a personal investigation.

Apparently, Bae Cheol-ho and his driver colleagues were fired by a Sunjin holding company for joining a union. Since said union is nowhere to be seen, it is safe to say Bae’s dues were not well spent. Regardless, when Bae crashes the corporate office seeking the wages owed him, Jo humiliates him, forcing him to box the thuggish manager Jeon, who pink-slipped him. Needless to say, the bout does not go well for Bae. In fact, he throws himself down the Sunjin stairwell, ending up in a coma rather than the morgue. Unfortunately, the case is not in Seo’s jurisdiction, but he is not about to let bureaucratic niceties dissuade him. Jo and his chief fixer, VP Choi Dae-ung play hardball, but they keep misunderestimating Seo’s obstinate tenacity.

Despite the somewhat clichéd class warfare themes (seriously, whatever happened to that disappearing union?), Veteran is a rock’em sock’em action film that benefits from its comparatively narrow scope and proletarian sensibility. Seo and Jo just really, really do not like each other. That builds mucho anticipation for their climatic face-off, which pays off nicely.

Hwang Jung-min is perfect as the rough-edged, slightly eccentric Seo, taking the maverick cop to a whole new level of unruliness. Yoo Ah-in is just okay as Jo, a standard issue villain whose likes we have often seen before, but Yu Hae-jin is terrific as his calculating right-hand Choi. Oh Dal-su largely keeps the shtick in check as the put-upon team leader, but Jin Kyung (his co-star in the even more awesome Assassination) really makes an impression in her brief but meaningful appearances as Seo’s less-than-amused wife Joo-yeon. Rather inexplicably, Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. Don Lee) also has a fleeting cameo as a stationary store owner, but he’s still pretty cool.

Although Veteran is not as smart and stylish as Ryoo’s The Berlin File, he still delivers plenty of satisfying action. Its grunginess and contempt for authority are both good things. Recommended for fans of hardnose cop movies, Veteran opens this Friday (9/18) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Brave Men’s Blood: Icelandic Cops Under Fire

On the fateful day of December 2, 2013, the Icelandic Police finally shot and killed someone dead for the first time in their two hundred twenty-five-plus year history. Instead of congratulations, they ordered a round of counseling all around. Typically, the rank-and-file do not carry firearms, relying instead on plenty of optimism. That arrangement suits the new Serbian kingpin in town just fine. However, an Internal Affairs cop with a chip on his shoulder will try launch a secret operation against the gangster and the high level officer protecting him in Olaf de Fleur’s Brave Men’s Blood (trailer here), which launches today on VOD from Oscilloscope Laboratories.

Hannes Ámason’s old man was a legend on the force, but their relationship was always rather frosty. It becomes even more so when he washes out of the elite training program for the SWAT-like Armed Police division. Frankly, it is easy to read plenty of resentment into his decision to subsequently take an Internal Affairs posting. However, a major case with implications beyond the force drops in his lap when old school gangster Gunnar Gunnarson requests a jailhouse meeting. Having been pushed out by Sergej, the Serbian upstart, Gunnarson is slightly out of sorts. As a last resort, he is willing to funnel information to Ámason that will help him take down his rival and his chief protector, Narcotics Squad chief Margeir, one of his dad’s old cronies.

Playing it close to the vest, Ámason only recruits two allies: Ívar, the Armed Police squad leader who formerly thought so little of him and Andreas, Margeir’s former protégé, who has been assigned to desk duties following a violent assault. Yet, the bad guys still catch wind of his operation, which puts his family directly in harm’s way.

Somehow de Fleur makes Twenty-First Century Reykjavik look like Chicago in the 1920s. For such a violence-averse force, he manages to get the Armed coppers into a heck of a lot of fire-fights (they’re going to need some serious counseling after all this). He gives the super-slick Miami Vice tradition a cool Nordic makeover, but he is a little too enamored with the flashback as a narrative device. There are an awful lot of them in Blood, but some are much more effective than others.

Darri Ingolfsson slow burns perfectly well as the annoyingly moralistic Ámason, but as is often the case in genre cinema, the colorful supporting cast really helps make the film. Ingvar E. Sigurdsson is clearly having a blast as the devious Gunnarson, while Sigurður Sigurjónsson oozes rodent-like oiliness. J.J. Field also does his best Jude Law impression in his brief appearances as Sergej’s British money man, chewing on as much scenery as time will allow.

Technically, Blood is a sequel to de Fleur’s City State, but no previous familiarity is required to enjoy the follow-up. It doesn’t even feel like it is calling back to a previous film, but presumably it is even richer if you have that background in your mental DVR. Frankly, nobody does these sorts of films better than Hong Kong auteurs like Johnnie To and Andrew Lau, but de Fleur makes a real go of it. Recommended for fans of stylishly cynical crooked cops-and-gangster movies, Brave Men’s Blood launches today (9/1) on VOD, from Oscilloscope Laboratories.

A Hard Day: Moderately Corrupt and Terribly Unlucky

By the standards of the Seoul police force, Det. Go Gun-soo is only moderately corrupt—a few minor payoffs here and there, no big deal. He is also a reasonably decent father, so we can root for him with a clear conscience while also enjoying every one-darned-thing-after-another that falls on his thoroughly compromised head in Kim Seong-hun’s A Hard Day (trailer here), which opens Friday in New York.

This day has already been one Go would prefer to forget. He has just been served divorce papers from his soon-to-be ex-wife while preparing for his mother’s funeral. It is an especially inconvenient time for the service, considering Internal Affairs is breathing down his neck. In his rush to cover up some incriminating evidence, Go apparently runs over some mysterious derelict with his car. He feels real bad about it, but what’s done is done. To save his neck (or so he thinks), Go manages to stash the body in his mother’s casket just before the burial.

Of course, Go soon figures out that was no vagrant, that was a prime suspect, who was somehow in league with the crooked Lt. Park Chang-min. Park is not simply a little bent like Go. He is a full blown gangster and he makes it his business to torment Go.

Kim visits more trouble upon poor, meatheaded Go than Job himself endured, but his wickedly black humor makes it all sadistically fun to watch. Somehow he keeps topping himself with clever plot twists and super-charged fight scenes. It is slick, tense, and loaded with cynical attitude. Yet, it is the “gee-whiz-now-what?” face of Lee Sun-kyun (better known for Hong Sang-soo dramedies) that really sells the bedlam.

This is definitely a testosterone driven film, featuring a hardnosed ensemble that really looks like a shady police precinct, especially Jeong Man-sik and Shin Jung-kuen as Go’s exasperated colleague and his world weary squad chief, respectively. Cho Jin-woong is also just flamboyantly evil enough as Lt. Park, without ever going excessively over the top.

It is just impressive to see A Hard Day careen about at such a deliriously breakneck speed. The energy and the humor never flag, while it ends on a rather ironic but wholly satisfying note. For fans of action movies and police corruption thrillers, A Hard Day is indeed the real deal. Highly recommended, it opens this Friday (7/17) in New York, at the Village East.

The Chronicles of Evil: You Could Say This Case is Personal

Chief Detective Choi’s latest investigation represents something of a conflict of interest. He is under considerable professional and political pressure to close the case quickly, regardless of the truth. Technically, he also happens to be the killer, but you would hardly call him the mastermind of screenwriter-director Baek Woon-hak’s dark thriller The Chronicles of Evil (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Queens.

After years of plugging, Det. Choi is on the verge of a national appointment. He has just received the presidential service medal, so if he can avoid entanglements for the next few months, his career should be made. Unfortunately, after a night celebrating with the Detective Squad, Choi’s cabbie waylays him, taking him to a remote park, where he tries to kill the baffled flatfoot. Leathery old Choi turns out to be more than his assailant can handle. However, after killing the man in self-defense, Choi covers up the incident rather than risk the inevitable controversy. This will be a mistake in retrospect.

The next morning, the top brass is outraged when a corpse is found very publically dangling from a crane at a construction site. Of course, Choi recognizes him. To satisfy his superiors, he will have to clear the case quickly, but he knows the DNA under the vic’s fingernails and the blurry CTV images of a passenger in backseat will inevitably lead back to him. Therefore Choi must try to ferret out his mystery antagonist, while struggling to cover his own tracks.

In a way, Chronicles somewhat parallels Kevin Costner’s breakout hit No Way Out, but Baek gives the story some grittily distinctive cops-and-stalkers twists. He shrewdly positions Choi as a figure compromised enough to deserve his predicament, but decent enough to root for. Baek nicely keeps one darned thing coming after another, getting flat-out Biblical down the stretch.

Recognizable to genre fans from Huh Jung’s Hide and Seek, Son Hyun-joo is perfectly cast as Det. Choi. He looks like a migraine personified and has vinegary world weariness sweating out of every pore. Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. Don Lee) is also reliably charismatic and hardnosed as Choi’s chief deputy, Det. Oh. This is a manly ensemble that has little time for romantic subplots or comic relief. They are all about covering-up and settling scores. When you spy a somewhat metrosexual character, be suspicious—very suspicious.

Baek is a wickedly smooth director, who pulls the audience through this murky morality tale at warp speed. Even though it is a supporting role, Chronicles (along with The Fives, Kundo, and Nameless Gangster) suggests Ma/Lee has enough cult/genre credibility for Hollywood to start calling. They could use someone with his action cred and screen presence. Highly recommended for fans of anti-heroic cop thrillers, The Chronicles of Evil opens this Friday (5/22) at the AMC Bay Terrace, in Flushing, Queens.

Tribeca ’15: Hyena

If they hadn’t become corrupt cops, Michael Logan and his team probably would have been football hooligans. Unfortunately, there probably isn’t enough time for the husky louts to go less crooked. Karma will be harsh to some in Gerard Johnson’s Hyena (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, following its U.S. premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

After plundering a large quantity of cocaine in a night club shake down, Logan’s team is in the mood to party. That is often the case, but this time Logan has bigger fish to fry. He has a meeting with his partner in a new Turkish drug trafficking scheme. This is not an undercover operation. It’s an investment. Inconveniently, Logan secretly witnesses the psychotic Albanian Kabashi Brothers murdering his contact. At least Logan manages to secure their first shipment. The Kabashis will be looking for that.

Things will steadily go from bad to worse for Logan. Initially, he tries to forge a temporary working arrangement with the Kabashi Brothers, but nobody believes that will last. He also must contend with an Internal Affairs investigation, while his mates become increasingly erratic and drug-addled. Seriously, how hard could it be to bust these knuckleheads?

Yes, we have seen this all before—and we’ve seen it better. The opening sequence is a stylistic tour-de-force, but from there on Gerard is indecisively torn between old school exploitation movies and affected art cinema. To a large extent, you can determine a film’s pretentiousness by comparing the amount of screen time devoted to the back of the protagonist’s head as they grimly trudge onward versus more conventional (and engaging) frontal and profile shots. In Hyena, the ratio is nearly one-to-one, which means tough sledding.

When we can actually see his face, Peter Ferdinando is pretty good as Logan. Likewise, Ben Wheatley regular Neil Maskell is obviously on comfortable ground as Logan’s sleazebag subordinate, Martin. His Kill List co-star MyAnna Buring also brings some verve to the film as Logan’s exasperated girlfriend, Lisa. Inexplicably, cult favorite Mem Ferda is almost completely wasted in what is effectively a cameo as Turkish crime lord Akif Dikman. Like Buddy Sorrell on the old Dick Van Dyke Show, he spends most of his screen time lying on a couch. Yet, he is still cool.

Speaking of Ferda, Hyena obviously follows in the tradition of Luis Prieto’s Pusher remake, but it cannot match the frenetic energy. Johnson tries to compensate with 1970s era pessimism and nihilism, but that gets old after the first act. However, fans of The The will get an nostalgic charge out of their original soundtrack. Not recommended, Hyena opens this Friday (5/1) in New York at the Cinema Village, after screening as a midnight selection at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.