Short Version:A very smartly written, well made Hong Kong Triad crime drama. Sure its a crowded genre, but this movie takes some interesting twists along the way and manages to keep the audience on its toes. Some awkward choices in editing and ambiguous/dangling story points do exist, but its a high class movie with great acting. I am sure it will be leaps and bounds better than the Scorcese remake.
Longer and more entertaining version: Ah the Hong Kong crime drama, this genre has been done to death since John Woo ripped through it with pistols akimbo in the late 80s and early 90s. Before you go on, if you haven't seen A Better Tomorrow 1 and 2, The Killer, and/or Hard Boiled I highly suggest you go watch those right now and not bother with this movie yet.
Andrew Lau (no relation to the actor in the movie Andy Lau) and his co-director Alan Mak managed to make an original triad gangster drama in a field of copycats. The basic core of the movie is relatively clever. The triads place several young gangsters with clean records in the police academy and expect them to be their eyes and ears in the police force. Andy Lau's character, Ming, is followed from the initial infiltration of the police academy to the cusp of a new high ranking position and a new life with his soon to be wife (who doesn't know who he is). At the same time, Tony Leung's character, Yan, is a hot shot police academy rookie and put in the undercover program very early and has been feeding information to the chief of police for the past 10 years. The story of both characters are told through flashbacks, which for some jarring reason use totally different actors to play the "young" versions of both characters.
At first, the movie literally feels like Hard Boiled just without all the action. Tony Leung is practically playing the same character he did in Hard Boiled. They even managed to steal/do an homage to a scene in Hard Boiled involving a gift from the chief of police to the long undercover cop on his birthday. The movie really gets interesting because of Andy Lau's gangster rising up the ranks and getting actual power in the police force and watching the choices he makes given this new power.
On the whole, the movie is wonderfully shot and makes minimal use of slo-mo. There are a lot of great rooftop shots of the city of Hong Kong. The acting is second to none. Tony Leung has been consistently putting in A+ performances in hong kong in a variety of genres. You can't even find an appropriate comparison to a Hollywood actor as far as versatility and dependability of performance. Andy Lau really has the meatiest role in the movie though and does wonders with it. I really don't want to delve to much into the plot because seeing it develop and how the characters react to it is half the fun of the movie.
In the next few months, Scorcese's remake of this movie, "The Departed", will be hitting with a pretty huge cast (Dicaprio, Wahlberg, Damon, and Jack Nicholson to name a few). He has chosen to set it in Boston with the Irish mob and the police force. Irish Mob? Why the hell would I want to see a Scorcese gangster flick with an IRISH MOB? Anyway, I am sure it will be far below the standard set by the Hong Kong version, but will get blown by all the critics because its a Scorcese film.
Watch the Hong Kong version and enjoy yourself. There are 2 sequels out, which arent as good apparently, but that is another review.
No comments:
Post a Comment