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.

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.

Made in Hong Kong ’18: Colour of the Game

They don’t make Triad gangsters like they used to. Wallace is an example of old school quality, whereas Robert, the son of the high-ranking boss Nigel is a perfect example of everything wrong with the new breed—and then some. When Wallace is ordered to whack Robert, he doesn’t have any choice in the matter, but he knows he is getting pulled into some dangerous business. There will be plenty of duplicity and deception in Kam Ka-wai’s Colour of the Game (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Made in Hong Kong Film Festival in DC.

Wallace is a grizzled, disillusioned cat, but he still gets the job done. Nobody messes with him or his new protégé Sky. “Superman,” his eager young apprentice, is a geek, but he handles the business side of things well. Sometimes his punky mechanic daughter Lily also helps out, but for a job this sensitive, he will need to call in two old comrades. Tyson is fresh out of prison and raring to go, whereas the ailing BBQ will need more coaxing.

Of course, Robert is an appalling human being, who totally has it coming. Nobody will mourn for him, least of all Wallace. Killing the big boss Dragon’s trophy wife in a coked-up rage certainly merits getting rubbed out, but it is still pretty reckless from the standpoint of internal
Triad politics. Maybe he should have suspected it was a set-up all along. Regardless, Wallace will not leave any of his team at their mercy, even if one of them is a police informer.

Colour is definitely a throwback to 1990s Hong Kong gangster movies (those white suits are totally cool). It obviously tries to recombine the elements of vintage Johnnie To films (like The Mission), starting with To stalwarts Simon Yam and Lam Suet. It is considered the loosely-tied third installment in screenwriter Jing Wong’s Colour trilogy, but it sure doesn’t seem like they expect much audience familiarity with the previous films.

In some ways, Colour is like a Harry Brown kind of film for Yam and Lam, who take stock of their careers through their aging gangster characters, Wallace, and his direct superior, Slaughter. Yet, it also heralds the arrival of Philip Ng and the promising debut of Sabrina Qiu, as Sky and Lily. Ng took a lot of heat for his cocky portrayal of Bruce Lee in Birth of the Dragon (despite looking like his dead-ringer), but here he truly distinguishes himself in the final smashing fight scene. He also develops some rather appealing chemistry with Qiu.

Nevertheless, nobody upstages Yam, not even Lam. He is hardnosed and hardboiled, but also somewhat philosophical and even remorseful about the state of things. It is the kind of role he was born to play—and watching him do it is always a treat. It is a little odd neither NYAFF or Fantasia programmed Colour, but Made in Hong Kong has it. Highly recommended for fans of the cast and/or the genre, Colour of the Game screens tomorrow (7/15) in DC at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery.

NYAFF ’17: Election

Big D is the Al Gore of the Triads. He assumed he was next in line for the two-year chairmanship of the Wo Shing Society, but the Uncles elected Lok instead. So, does he accept the results of the voting and concentrate on his own business? No, of course not. The resulting power struggle escalates into full-scale street violence in Johnnie To’s modern classic Election (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 New York Asian Film Festival.

Frankly, Lok appears to be the more forward-thinking of the two candidates, whereas Big D can fly off the handle a wee bit. Slightly disappointed by the election results, Big D lashes out at two swing-voters he holds responsible. In response, the outgoing chairman dispatches his lieutenants to China with the Dagon Baton, which is ceremoniously handed down to each new chairman. Thus, begins a mad scramble between the two factions for strategic possession of the baton. However, most of the plotting will be done within prison after Chief Superintendent Hui has both candidates and several senior uncles arrested, in hopes of preventing open war.

This is the film that will probably always come up first when you google Johnnie To—and for good reason. For many, it was also their gateway drug into a full-on Hong Kong cinema addiction. It is a lean, mean, snarling machine of a film, but there is also something strangely beautiful about its savage austerity.

Both Simon Yam and “Big” Tony Leung Ka-fai give classic, career-defining performances as the diametrically-opposed Lok and Big D, respectively. There scenes together are pure movie magic—those who have seen it will instantly know what I mean.

They are indeed the bosses of bosses, but Election is fully loaded with first-rate supporting turns. Lam Suet and Gordon Lam are terrific as Big Head and Kun, two henchmen initially on opposite sides of the factional divide, who meet rather awkwardly. It is amazing to see superstars like Louis Koo and Nick Cheung getting relatively limited screen-time (at least in the initial film), but they burn up the joint with their hardboiled intensity. It is also cool to see Shaw Brothers mainstay David Chiang as the commanding Chief Superintendent. Yet, perhaps the late, great Wong Tin-lam’s quietly droll turn as Uncle Teng, the Uncle of Uncles, best personifies the crafty film.

Election would be followed by two sequels that would continue and deepen the story, reaching Shakespearean levels of tragedy. Hubris: it’s a killer. Yet, Election ends on a perfect note that certainly does not lack for closure. There is no question it is a contemporary classic. Very highly recommended, Election screens Friday (7/7) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYAFF.

Johnnie To’s Three

The title comes from a truncated Confucius quote regarding humility that sort of works in the original Cantonese Chinese context. In Western markets, it vaguely seems to relate to the central trio of characters, whose pride most likely will cometh before a fall. However, knowing fan favorite Lam Suet has a considerable supporting role will probably be much more interesting to American audiences than the participation of C-pop star Wallace Chung, especially considering this is a Johnnie To film. Although it is smaller in scope than his gangster classics, To still delivers the goods in Three (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

It has been a bad day for Dr. Tong Qian —and it will soon get far worse. She has had a string of unfortunate surgeries, including the now partially paralyzed young man, who constantly berates her whenever she walks through the recovery ward. Of course, she is hardly the sort of doctor to admit a mistake. This is all beside the point to her latest hard case patient.

Frankly, Inspector Chen hoped his prisoner would never make it to the hospital. That bullet wound to the head was no accident. Yet, in a freakish turn of fate, the bullet became precariously lodged in the perp’s skull. The prognosis would be decent if he would consent to surgery, but the armed robber refuses. Instead, he bides his time fully conscious, waiting for his gang to break him loose. Inspector Chen figures they are coming, but they are actually already there.

Granted, Three isn’t Election or Drug War or [insert your favorite Johnnie To movie here], but it is a lean and mean, finely tuned thriller machine. It also further demonstrates To’s ability to get the best out of HK superstar Louis Koo, who broods like a monster as the hard-nosed but slightly neurotic Inspector Chen. Vicki Zhao Wei really plays against type, out-angsting Koo as the insecure doctor with the sub-par bedside manner. Chung chews the scenery with cinematic glee, more than exceeding expectations, but Lam Suet makes the film as the sad sack member of Chen’s task force. He starts out as comic relief, but gets serious as a heart attack in the second act.

Any HK thriller set in a hospital is bound to bring to mind John Woo’s Hard Boiled, but To goes for more of an intimate Desperate Hours kind of vibe, pulling it off quite nicely. Still, he must be cognizant of the echoes, since he throws in a Battleship Potemkin reference for good measure. Regardless, it all adds up to a lot of fun. Recommended for fans of the action auteur and his big name cast, To’s Three opens this Friday (6/24) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Saving Mr. Wu: Andy Lau Plays His Co-Star

Why should Wu Ruofu replay the worst experience of his life when he can get Andy Lau to do it for him? Instead, he takes on the part of the police chief scrambling to rescue the kidnapped actor. It might sound slightly meta but the drama is as gritty as it gets in Ding Sheng’s Saving Mr. Wu (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Although Wu (scrupulously referred to as “Mr. Wu” throughout the film, in Dragnet-Naked City-style) is a Mainland actor primarily known for television, he is reinvented here as a Hong Kong leading man movie star and former Cantopop idol, to capitalize on the Lau persona. However, the basic arc is reasonably faithful to the actual incident. While coming out of a Beijing karaoke club where he had been celebrating with a producer, Wu is kidnapped by a gang impersonating police officers. Frankly, Wu is never really fooled by them. After all, he has played plenty of cops in action movies. However, Zhang Hua and his accomplices have superior numbers and arms.

Clearly, Zhang is not as smart as he thinks he is, because Xing Feng and his boss, Captain Cao Gang (portrayed by the steely-looking Wu himself) manage to capture him. Unfortunately, they have not discovered his hideout and they suspect Zhang left orders to kill Wu by a certain time. Thus Saving unfolds in a split narrative, as the kidnapping drama catches up with the cat-and-mouse game playing out in the interrogation room.

Normally this sort of flashing-back and flashing-forward structure is just asking for trouble, but Ding maintains such tight control over the temporal shifts, they actually help build suspense. It also facilitates the ironic juxtaposition of Mr. Wu wrapped in chains and the apprehended Zhang ensconced in an iron maiden-ish contraption that looks like it would give Amnesty International a cow if it were used in any other country besides China.

When you watch Lau in Saving, you realize he is not one of the world’s biggest movie stars for nothing. This is a subtle, slow-burning performance that sneaks up and coldcocks you. Watching him protect Xiao Dou, a fellow kidnapping victim who was in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time becomes seriously poignant. Conversely, Wang Qingyuan is massively creepy as the cruel and erratic Zhang. With him, every twitch screams trouble.

Frankly, as Gang, the real Wu is so hardnosed and grizzled, it seems strange that he has not made more films—or that anyone would want to try their luck kidnapping him. As an extra added bonus, Lam Suet appears as Wu’s trusted army buddy Mr. Su, playing it totally straight, but still showing the dynamic presence that enlivened so many Johnnie To films.

Saving is a tight, tense ripped-from-the-headlines thriller that gets shockingly mature and emotional in its climatic moments. Ding’s Police Story: Lockdown is far better than its reputation suggests (honest, it is), but this film should take him to the next level—and pretty much keep Lau at the top. Gripping and unusually satisfying, Saving Mr. Wu is highly recommended for all fans of procedurals when it opens this Friday (10/2) 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.

Accident: Things Happen for a Reason

Ho Kwok-fai is not living in a random universe.  Accidents happen for a reason: money.  He would know.  He is the mastermind behind a team of “accident choreographers.”  Unfortunately, they have apparently attracted the wrong sort of attention from a competitor in Accident (trailer here), Soi Cheang’s moody thriller produced by HK action legend Johnnie To, which releases today on DVD and Blu-ray from Shout Factory.

Though not quite as Rube Goldbergian, Ho’s team are like a Final Destination movie unto themselves.  Just ask the Triad boss in the opening sequence, while you can.  “The Brain” runs the show with tick-tock precision, but a dark cloud seems to hang over their latest gig.  “Uncle” starts to show signs of dementia and the necessary rain will not come.  Then the wheels come totally off.

Going underground, Ho starts surveilling an insurance executive he suspects played a part in the disastrous non-accident.  Already haunted by his wife’s fatal auto crash, his psyche will sink to some pretty low places.  Rather than a standard hitman-on-the-run film, Accident treads a more existential path, in the tradition of Coppola’s The Conversation (granted, it is not exactly in the same league).

In the years since To’s Election epic most of what American audiences have seen of Louis Koo were romantic or comedic features, like Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, Magicto Win, and All’s Well Ends Well 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009.  Nonetheless, he shows plenty of screen grit in Accident, brooding like mad, yet getting stone cold medieval when necessary.  As a bonus, Lam Suet, To’s regular comic relief specialist, brings his usual energy, but plays Ho’s stout but not shticky henchman “Fatty” with considerable restraint.

Viewers who have seen a lot of Hollywood-produced thrillers will probably be downright shocked by Accident, precisely because of their preconditioning.  Indeed, Cheang is willing to take it in a direction studio filmmakers never would, which is cool.  Of course, knowing it is produced by To and his Milkyway Image team is something of a seal of approval in and of itself.  Enthusiastically recommended for fans of noir thrillers and HK cinema, Accident is now available on DVD at online and quality brick-and-mortar retailers everywhere.