Help!!! (Johnnie To/Wai Ka Fai,2001)

The Johnnie To-Wai Ka Fai partnership is a delicate balance. An exchange of ideas of what cinema can and should do from two filmmakers that have fairly different approaches that just happened to decide they are much better working together. Among all their films none illustrate this better than this satire, which derives meaning among other things through the noise their unusual collaboration brings to the table.

One a very basic level Help!!! is a rather clear film: a political satire about post-holdover Hong Kong using a very messy hospital where nothing works, doctor treat patients like garbage and a Kafkaesque cabal of unseen bureaucrats rule over everything and the efforts of three compassionate doctors (Cecilia Cheung, Ekin Cheng and Jordan Chan) towards making the place better. At center is the allegory of mal function, the idea that this is a place of paralysis where nothing is allowed to work (“being a doctor is hard” becomes the film unofficial refrain). Help!!!  works from this idea overtime towards completing it with multiple signifiers that made clear that the hospital is a stand in for Hong Kong itself.

Plenty of satirical political comedies have been done this way, even if Help!!! comes with the expected tone of an over the top Hong Kong comedy and its typical ratio of very funny to just plain silly, but here we are in a Wai Ka Fai film and he can’t stop himself overcomplicating things. Help!!! is also a very cynical film that don’t even allow its heroes the right to their romantic idealism. A film that is deliberate structured to eat itself – the metaphor of mal function becoming part of the film construction – that literally ends in nothingness (and indeed the final twist suggest we have just watched another TV medical soap). The film is a deliberate incoherent text, which is set to muddle its own discourse so to better radicalize it. The concept is pure Wai Ka Fai and more than any other Wai-To collaboration one feels the division between Wai as an idea man and To as the metteur en scene is very pronounced here.

To some extent one can see a similar tone to Wai’s later comedy The Shopaholics (also co-starring Chan and Cheung) where intentional incoherence becomes central to its satirical nihilism proposal. If Help!!! is a much superior film that comes to the delicate balance that is the To-Wai partnership. Wai’s perception of cinema is very much a written one, his cynical satire exists mostly as a concept. Johnnie To’s idea of cinema is of a much more sensual nature, his conception of political satire has much more flesh to it. Johnnie To main contribution to Help!!! is given the hospital a strong sense of place that radical contrasts with Wai’s theatre of absurd. We might be in the middle of a comedy that includes talking cars and hospital patients as human garbage cans but the hospital breathes as an actual place whose mal function is a real tragedy and not just an allegorical concept.  This has the effect of counter some of Wai Ka Fai cynicism with a dose of To’s romanticism, the tragic place makes Cheung’s efforts to better it matter in a different key. If Help!!! is a incoherent film it is much more political for being so, it is the noise between the concept and the sensual, the cynic and the romantic that gives each a larger more dynamic view of Hong Kong’s dysfunction.

Fantasia (Wai Ka Fai,2004)

Hong Kong cinema exists in a state of sustained aesthesis, a cinema forever haunted by the idea of its now lost popularity. A popular cinema without an audience done by people that still remember the better days of packed houses, larger production and bigger stars. It is an ideal cinema for nostalgia trips that just happens to exist in a place that seems dedicated to live in a constant now.  Milkyway Image whole mission is try to break this and if Fantasia is Wai Ka Fai better film as a director it has a lot to do with how it gets to heart of this feeling.

Pitched somewhere between a nostalgia trip and Johnnie To exercises in genre renewal, Fantasia is made of characters and parts from other early 60-70’s films. Lau Ching Wan plays a Michael Hui type that runs a detective agency (like in The Private Eyes) with Louis Koo (who was born to play Sam Hui) and very Ricky Hui-like Jordan Chan. Out of a genie bottle shows up harrypotterish wizard Cecilia Cheung (the ghost of Hollywood present?) that easily takes the identity of Josephine Siao’s Plain Jane. And there’s Francis Ng criminal Shek Kin type in which Ng mugs and chews the scenery as if in his shoulders laid a whole Hong Kong Cinema tradition. One can’t quite describe Fantasia’s plot which is virtual incomprehensible if one is not versed in Cantonese Cinema tradition, but that is precisely the point.

Like most of Wai Ka Fai’s films Fantasia’s charms are very conceptual in nature like its use of popstars like the Twins and Shine in supporting role turning a big staple of current Hong Kong Cinema in just a foundation piece on his game of elaborate homage to the past. There is also no surprise that the film own bit of deliberate parody of American Cinema (itself a large tradition in current wacky HK comedies) is to Jurassic Park, the film whose success along with Speed start  Hollywood’s dominance in the local market, that gets here a very intentional and literal low brow sheen.

Fantasia is a parody, homage and something of an inquiry on the viability of Popular Cantonese Cinema pre 1980 in the current age. That its titled Fantasia and uses deliberate use of wizards and wishes is certainly no accident. The film wouldn’t work if its whole cast was not very game and if they and Wai Ka Fai were not in synch in how the film is playing with iconography. Fantasia could be a likable silly nostalgia trip but it claims its own vigor and energy. As one sees Lau Ching Wan and Cecilia Cheung play acting past idols, Fantasia locates vitality in give those old icons new bodies. It does achieve its own sort of renewal.

Election 2 (Johnnie To,2006)

The two Elections as its filmmakers likes to claim are gangsters film where no shots are fired. This doesn’t mean they aren’t violent films in their own way. The brutal intensity that Johnnie To sustains throughout Election 2 is almost intolerable.  What matters for To here is much less keeping his position as an action auteur  – that he did in Exiled released a bit later – but try to come to terms with a state of barbarism that he seems taking post-holdover Hong Kong.

It is no surprise that both Elections are films without shootouts as To uses the triads as a starting point: as Election 2 progresses it gets more and more clear that the film center is far away from organized crime. If Election – in retrospect, a first draft – shows the triads tradition dissolving in a desperate power struggle, Election 2 has not even time to subtle things like symbolic power batons. Simon Yam, who ascend to power on first film, wants to rewrite rules to allow his reelection,  Louis Koo who helped him get there wants to just keep his attempts to legalize his dealings until an encounter with Mainland China bureaucrats makes clear he needs the power to achieve that. Koo’s ambition expands Election 2 beyond the careful build gangster world and reveals a much larger corrupt universe.

As a political film, Election 2 is exemplary. To ably filters his preoccupations through his narrative and there is no false rhetorical move. The filmmaker’s wrath, visible on screen, never clouds his perceptive gaze.  It is no surprise that unlike other major gangsters films – from Scarface to The Godfather – there is no attempt here to mythologize its central figure, one never lose sight that Louis Koo is no more than a delusional criminal, despite all his good manners. In this sense, there is a powerful sequence involving some frightened gangsters, a doghouse and meat grinder.

What Johnnie To really succeeds is in given Koo and Yam’s large ambitions a concrete existence which propels the constant feeling that everything else in their worlds are a disposable accessory.  Election 2 is never more alive than when describing the feeling of being in this world where there is no break to ambition and no way to control all the many indivisual interests.  There is a sense of paranoia filtered by a political gaze and shown through an expressive editing and eye to small nuance of behavior.

Johnnie To also never loses historical perspective on what he describes: what gives Election 2 a special bitterness, is its emphasis on children.  The film’s strongest scene involves a man being stabbed as he watches his son literal run to a life of crime (an idea that To replays in a more abstract but equally powerful way in the climax).  What makes Election 2’s last 20 minutes so oppressive and tragic is this certainty that violence is there ready to embrace the future generations. Not even the young can escape Election 2’s state of barbarism.

Election (Johnnie To,2005)

It is rather unusual to return to Election a few years later. Election is an incomplete film, something of a rough draft, and at heart an act of world building. One can’t judge Election without having in mind Election 2 and as compelling as the Simon Yam/Tony Leung Ka Fai power struggle can be, on later visit when can’t stop notice Louis Koo looking at the narrative margin, the biggest star in the cast that seems to be doing nothing and mostly getting through motions.

One can praise Election for its poised political jabs, but the punches on Election 2 nightmare are much harder. One can also praise it for its deft triad deconstruction and here we start to arrive at what Johnnie To, his writers and actors do that sit it apart. Yam and Leung are asked to play pure versions of film triad biggest iconic ideals – pure righteous and pure bravado – and most have them disappear as the film goes along (Leung is particularly good at suggesting how much he is playing at it), while many good supporting players (Wang Tian-lan, Lam Suet, Nick Cheung) plays variations on triad archetype that feel hallow and useless.

What is better is that Election does that instead suggesting an anti-triad film, action is spare and rather unusual in its presentation but Johnnie To avoids the usual deconstruction easy way out of trying just to frustrate the audience for its own sake. Far from it, the multiple factions fighting themselves plot remains very compelling (if not always very clear) and the bits of actual action are very effective despite their offbeat ways. The film only goes away from that in its bleak ending that has a raw power of its own and literalizes most of Election main thematic concerns in some quick ugly violence.

The reason why the deconstruction in Election is so compelling is that the film bases it in clever and detailed world building. In retrospect, Election main reason is be a prologue and setup Election 2, so most of the film’s main movements are towards establishing its world in as much detail as possible. So Johnnie To’s deconstructions comes for careful observation about how the world of the film’s fictional triad works, more set towards characters behavior than unexpected narrative turns. If Election is a success it is mostly because by the time Simon Yam reveals himself as rather untrustworthy fishing partner, everything we see about Election’s triad world make that a natural and inevitable extension to the action. If want your film to be setup, we can’t do much better than this.

Days of Being Wild (Wong kar-wai,1990)

Early on Days of Being Wild, Leslie Cheung seduces Maggie Cheung after convincing her that they would always remember the one minute they spend together. It’s the film’s key passage (IF noto f Wong Kar-wai’s whole career),the one that haunts the remaining action. Some of Days of Being Wild’s pleasure comes from seen Wong’s ability to perfect capture a moment’s texture finds its first complete expression. It is his second feature, but a big step up from his debut As Tears Go By, with Wong’s finally finding his very unusual work’s method  and (with Patrick Tam’s help) finding how to shape material to his own personal needs. It also remains in a certain way his Best and most direct film. A piece of time sustained; every sequence suggesting a captured moment, observed and imagined till smallest of details. Just think of Maggie Cheung scenes working at the stadium’s bar, or any given moment starring Jacky Cheung, who in few minutes of screen time suggests as much as the leads.

Days of Being Wild is a cruel film. Its dramatic logic is that of the aborted desire in the form of circle of rejections. Pretty much seconds after Leslie and Maggie get their minute, they are already fighting months later –their romance lost in an ellipsis. Days of Being Wild hás some time for seduction, and none for romance. Despite his reputation as serial womanizer, Wong Kar Wai’s always shoots Leslie Cheung post-coitus, exhausted, his mind far away from whoever is the woman next to him. The only one that truly holds his attention been the mother whose identity He don’t know, and who when he finally manage to find refuses to seen him, just another rejection among many.

With the possible exception of Chungking Express, a certain atmosphere of desperation hás always been a key aspect of Wong Kar-wai’s cinema, but only here and in 2046 (the Wong’s film that Days of Being Wild is most similar to) that it encounters full expression. Even the film’s structure makes this impression even stronger, suggesting that every one of those isolate moments ,as lively as they might be,add very little into each other. Days of Being Wild’s Hong Kong is a phantom metropolis. As expensive as the film might have been, it doesn’t look like a cent was expend in extras; Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau can walk with no direction through Hong Kong’s night certain that they won’t meet a single soul.

Days of Being Wild is an incomplete film. Of the filmmakers many attempts to find a film analogue to his beloved argentine literature (Patrick Tam  has pointed the film was moldered on Manuel Puig’s excellent Heartbreak Tango),Days of Being Wild is the most successful with its action taking place in a series of fragments throughout a little more than two years, without one’s never being sure when the next shot will take place in. Far beyond its multiple ellipses Days of Being Wild is literally an incomplete film, being originally planned as par tone of a diptych, a project  never allowed to finish thanks to this film commercial flop. What remains of Days of Being Wild part two is its astonishing final sequence with a young Tony Leung Chi Wai preparing to go out at night. It is one of Wong Kar-wai’s cinema greatest moments, a silent sequence of around three minutes which draws us in this nameless character while he does his nails, dresses a coat, gets his money and game cards and finishes his hair. This is one of Leung’s greatest works despite He having no dialogue, everything we learn about his chracters caming though some very mundane actions; but that is exavtly the scene’s very concrete appeal, that onl.y give us what is visible to our gaze.

Despite that, Days of Being Wild ended up being “followed” by In The Mood for Love and 2046, and it is very interesting to see how 60’s Hong Kong vary and develops film by film: from a period that exist before anything else as an idea in Days of Being Wild, till a total immersion in history in 2046. Seen together, they do make for a vast and beautiful historical epic about Hong Kong’s sense of loss.

Flashpoint (Wilson Yip,2007)

One of Flashpoint’s many pleasures is to observe star/choreographer/co-auteur Donnie Yen transform himself from  inexpressive sub Dirty Harry into the world’s most exuberant man alive every time the film free itself from the needs of exposition. The first time is a shock (at least if one is a Yen novice), by the time of its glorious finale, we anxious expect for such a moment. Flash Point is a film in total synch with its star rhythm: when trying to follow the Milkyway-type plot, it Just remember us that few things are more fragile than a failed at attempt at weight, when it gives itself to Yen’s delirium , it rivals Milkyway in its desire to bring local popular cinema to its heyday.

Flash Point like Yen and Wilson Yip’s previous Sha Po Lang propose itself as an act of revitalization. The constant motive here being a return to some old tired local crime film structures and attempt to fresh them up at least a little. Yen and Yip don’t quite have the emotional precision to hit some of Hong Kong’s action film higher marks but they do have the creativity to pull the delirious pleasure of something like Sammo Hung’s Dragons Forever.

The plot could not be more standard (Yen chasing a gang of very violent Vietnamese brothers) and Yip does little to mix things up, but it is functional enough for the film’s interest. There’s some good solutions: a bomb is inserted inside a fried chicken that is been served in a cop’s reunion,  but the man responsible of detonate it loses the control’s battery and starts a long comic routine as the death chicken is passed hand in hand in a mix of tension and humor. Flash Point is a compact film, but Yip has a natural feel towards playing with time and push situations like the aforementioned one way beyond one expects.

Yen put his narcissism aside and let Yip play with his image which gives the film a Nice unpredictable feeling. Yen is also responsible for the action and here He and Yip are in perfect synch. The final sequence is a 15 minute masterpiece of choreographed mayhem tht would justify the film by itself. The tension is derived less from outcome – despite the feel that no one is safe –, but by the ways that Yen and Yip keep finding to open the scene even more. It has multiple actors, gunfire, martial arts, multiple dramatic twists and at least three distinct spaces. Every time a situation potential is draining, the filmmakers find a new way to push it to another direction, be by changing the rules, adding new players, or finding a new way to explore location. The sequence richness and varied mix of tone and situation not only test Yen’s ability as a choreographer, but seems to animate him as a performer as well. As this final sequence keep mixing and expanding one can see the Yen/Yip revitalization project complete itself with vigor.

Fatal Contact (Dennis Law,2006)

Wu Jing position as potential martial arts superstar started with his turn opposite Donnie Yen in Sha Po Lang, so it makes sense that his follow up star vehicle Fatal Contact would embrace the schizophrenia that Wilson Yip and Yen gave SPL. Like that film, Fatal Contact is a tale of two distant tones, this time one gets plenty of choreography built around Wu Jing fighting prowess  but also a morality tale about the dangers of corruption that take it as far as it can. It’s a weird marriage made a bit more acceptable thanks to the option of keeping most of action (with a couple of exceptions) limited to official combats, so Fatal Contact can go along with its moral lesson while getting interrupted by Wu Jing showing his skills only when plot makes easier for Dennis Law’s to move to a different tone.

Not surprising the action sequences are much more stronger than the drama build around it, Fatal Contact is specially good at making short displays of power look impactful so even if Wu Jing’s wins a fight in a quick manner it still feels very satisfying.  Wu Jing, Dennis Law and action director Li Chung-Chi are also quite good at showing his progress as fighter throughout the film going for more spectacular movements towards a more pragmatic and effective style. That’s important as Fatal Contact is at heart a film about the limits of pragmatism. And this progress that charts Wu Jing lowering himself toward the underground fights world he is now attached, makes Fatal Contact point in a better more graceful and less labored manner than all the twists and melodrama that Law throws at both characters and audience.

It doesn’t help that most of the morality play aspect goes through co-star Miki Young that does very little with it. Law seems to work overtime to sell how its seedy underworld is corrupting both leads but Wu Jing tends to move between very likable and very intense modes and Young remains at lost far to removed to be as affected by everything as Fatal Contact’s heavy handed message asks for. Surprising, it is Ronald Cheng as mix of sidekick and martial arts master who becomes the film one true character able to embody the heaviness of their world.

One might praise Dennis Law and his producers for going for it in this first Wu Jing real vehicle and let the grimness of their chosen film world and its idea about the dangers of pragmatism to resonate as far as they try to go, but that remains just a sketch, the big dramatic arc are there, but it lacks a better development underworld that could really consume its characters. Everything is too disconnected rendering Fatal Contact message abstract and by consequence making its grimness unearned and so unsatisfying. Fatal Contact only really makes sense when Wu Jing is there fighting sacrificing his natural grace for a more primitive form of violence.

Eye in the Sky (Yau Nai-Hoi,2007)

Milkyway long time screenwriter Yau Nai-Hoi directorial debut is all about the pleasures of procedure. A miniature crime thriller which uses its surveillance theme less for the usual criticism than as avenue to create thrilling cinematic sequences that equates the proverbial Eye in the Sky less to some Big Brother type evil but the filmmaker’s eye. Indeed the most impressive thing about Eye in the Sky is that as a screenwriter’s director debut there’s nothing much written about it, it is a film very much about filmmaking that can only exist in as a film.

Kate Tsui is a newcomer cop in the surveillance beat, she is assigned to veteran Simon Yam unit and gets a on job training in her first assignment following a bunch of robbers lead by Tony Leung Ka Fai. Eye in the Sky mostly split between Yam tutoring Tsui in the ins and outs of following and peeping criminals and Tsui’s lurking around Leung.  Yau Nai-Hoi has a very patient detailed oriented approach to this: the thrills here arrive from minor elements and new ways to make every little bit about surveillance very close to malfunction without really exposing the cops.  There’s plenty of time given to philosophizing about the natural of the cops work, how they need to keep themselves removed so not to interfere and how to keep focus on the target.

Eye in the Sky gets as much as it can from its location shooting. A long time Milkyway strength in their Hong Kong set films that is put to great use here and one of the many ways, Eye in the Sky suggest a collaborative company effort in a positive way. Procedural is essential to the film’s sense of suspense so most of it is given to Tsui, Yam and Leung moving through the Hong Kong crowd, all both leads and subjects to Yau’s gaze. All three actors are remarkable (as is Lam Suet, Lai Yiu-Cheung and Berg Ng as Leung’s accomplices) great at both letting detail build character and the sort behavior acting that the film style ask for, but Leung is a true standout suggesting so much just by being.

This is ultimately a film about work.  One usually finds plenty of crime films build on procedural plot, but is much rarer to find one build in genuine procedural elements (obviously eventually the last act do gives away to more big film events but even those are do0ne in a subdued style that fits the film). That Yau keeps cutting to the control room in which the bigger cops making use of Yam and Tsui work just makes their jobs and the film emphasis in it more compelling.

Eye in the Sky is as much a film about filmmaking as it is a film about cop procedural, it is in many ways a celebration of Milkyway craftsmen who do all the small details to assure the films vision come to pass.  Yau emphasis on small picture and how minor detail helps getting a job done speaks a lot about how on set film work feels and the pressure our unsung heroes to perform is not unlike how work feels to most film craftsmen. In many ways, Eyes in the Sky is not only Yau’s debut but a celebration of Milkyway as company much larger than just Johnnie To (and to a lesser extent Wai Ka Fai).

Duel to the Death (Ching Siu-Tung,1983)

A key film in which Ching Siu-Tung takes the New Wave attempts of updating the swordplay film (Tsui’s The Butterfly Murders, Tam’s The Sword) and give it a more fluent outlook. The result might be seen as Hong Kong’s cinema first modern period action film, it even come out same year as Lau Kar Leung effectively send the Shaw Brothers martial arts film to glorious retirement with Eight Diagram Pole Fighter.

For ages the best swordfighter in China and Japan meet every 10 years to a fight to death, it is time again but a lot of political intrigue, betrayals and a plot to steal China’s greatest fighters might get in the way of our sword masters (Norman Tsui and Damian Lau) to fulfill their fate and get to their title duel.  Ching Siu-Tung throws at us plenty of disparate elements – lots of gore, an over the top paraplegic villain, some romance, overcomplicated political plotting, flying ninjas –, but keeps them unifying by the same clear elaborate visual approach.

Duel to the Death is as much a film brat work as some of the early Tsui Hark’s attempts at genre blending, but Ching Siu-Tung approach could not be more different. As often happens with great choreographers, he has too much respect for his material; he is less interested in modernizing like Tsui wanted, than just give the wu xia duel a chance at a renewal. That is what makes Duel to the Death often so absorbing and grounds its quirk more offbeat elements: it is an amazing generous film by someone that truly love this tradition and found something very alive and new inside it and is willing to share it with us.

Everything in Duel to the Death is set to make its title encounter happen. In some ways it is like Ching Siu-Tung desire for a contemporary swordplay film doubles into his two leads honor-filled idea that they need to just meet and get it over with it till the best swordfighter survive.  When it finally happens it is a triumph that drives the film aesthetics promise home: a final release after plenty of build up into quick, brutal, punishing and graceful series of movements. Every element on screen coordinated perfectly by the filmmaker/choreographer: bodies crashing and getting destroyed in the name of film. Duel to the Death complete succeeds in its act of renewal, it is both awed by tradition and very much of its moment and a definitely cinematic pleasure.

Dog Bite Dog (Soi Cheang,2006)

Hong Kong becomes a violent refugee camp/playhouse in another chapter of Soi Cheang’s attempt to turn the city into a large house of horrors. His deeply conflicted feelings about his adopted home town are fully apparent in this violent travelogue. Cheang’s appropriation of Hong Kong cinema’s beloved double theme for a truly repulsive presentation makes Dog Bite Dog one of his most pointed efforts.

Dog Bite Dog makes a mockery of most films that claim to be dark and true to ugliest aspect of human nature as if Soi Cheang is saying here is what true ugliness looks like. There’s very little redeeming factor here even the romance comes wrapped around some disturbing scenes and the intimation that our leading lady (Pei Pei) is willing to lose a limb to gangrene by sticking for her man. The man in question is hired assassin Edison Chen a silent killing machine living a pile of bodies on his way out of the country while being pursued by cop Sam Lee that is taking this job a bit to serious for his sanity.

The bullets fly but none of usual doppelganger honor one expects of such premises just two dueling monsters and a lot of collateral carnage between them. What emerges is the idea that we are in wayward place better suited to human dogs like the two violent lead characters. Dog Bite Dog presents itself as escape point where lost souls can finally met and fulfill their violent promises. Everyone here is a symbolic refugee (that Chen’s character is a Cambodian just literalizes the idea). Their real place is the mean and ugly violence Dog Bite Dog allows them to deliver.

Cheang keeps Dog Bite Dog complete uncompromising which is impressive at first and a bit less later, thanks to a last act that takes the film’s core ideas to an over the top extreme that gets close to laughable. Soi Cheang remains essentially an horror director and this is truly a nihilist dark horror film about human basic moral bankruptcy disguised as a cops and killers potboiler. One can’t stop admire Cheang’s for his conviction even the worst moments in Dog Bite Dog betray a total single handed devotion to its ugly word view. It is a truly harrowing experience which at its best turns such a commitment to show the city as tormented crux of violent bodies into poetics of horror. No surprise it loses something when it leaves locale behind, without Cheang’s attraction/repulsionto Hong Kong’s, Dog Bite Dog’s questions turn into less imposing abstraction.