He Lives by Night (Po-Chi Leong,1982)

Po-Chi Leong love for genre trappings has rarely been put to better use than in this terrific giallo of sorts. He builds a careful slasher film without any actual slashing that has tons of excellent detail and good character work. There is a killer on the lose that struggles woman with silk stockings, and two cops (a very young Simon Yam and Kent Cheng) investigating the case happens to be more busy trying to seduce very curious radio DJ Sylvia Chang who turns the case into her mission. This might get horror fans surprised at it does the very HK cinema like genre blending of thrilling horror and many wacky humor scenes, both sides play each other well and the comedy makes the horror more disturbing. Po-Chi Leong and his writers gave the film a lot of lively detail starting with its cross dresser serial killer that arrives out of Brian De Palma film. The entire stalking final act inside the radio station is as thrilling as prime Carpenter or Argento if less visual creative. He Lives by Night also makes great use of Kent Cheng as an unlikely hero.

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.

Fulltime Killer (Johnnie To/Wai Ka Fai,2001)

The Milkyway gang take their shot at a larger Pan-Asian identity with mixed results. Fulltime Killer is a very interesting mix of art and commerce, very ambitious in both fronts and very dependent of how it moves between both extremes to meet its goal. The plot intentionally replays some of To/Wai main mannerism specially in the repackage of the double theme: Andy Lau is a Chinese hitman that wants to be known as greatest in Asia and Takashi Sorimachi is the Japanese hitman that holds the title. So Lau sets to engage the cool solitary Sorimachi in a game so they can confront it other to decide who should be known as the greatest local hitman. What is fascinating here is watching To and Wai erasing Hong Kong out of their own film (most of it speak in English, but also in multiple Asian language). Fulltime Killer desperate want to appeal to a larger Pan-Asian audience, but at center of it is the question if there is a Pan-Asian identity that a simple potboiler like this can tap into. There is nostalgia here from an earlier era when Hong Kong movies had an easier time travelling through Eastern Asia, but a very unquiet feeling that keeps lurking. The film itself sometimes resembles an overdrive parody of earlier Milyway films. Fulltime Killer might be a noble failure but that it never quite reaches the larger multicultural identity it craves might actually make it a secret success.

Fatal Move (Dennis Law,2008)

Most of the main players from Sha Po Lang (minus Donnie Yen) are reunited in this Dennis Law triad film. Like Law previous Fatal Contact this hopes to combine action with a very dour perspective. Fatal Move would like to be a triad tragedy where a bad move cost most of its cast lives, but fails to earn its drama. It also mostly fails to exist as a large triad bloodbath even with fairly explicit Category III violence as Law’s approach is just too dull to make viewers engaged between the many action scenes. This film could serious use another editor as at over 110 minutes it is easily 20 minutes longer than it needs to be, with Law mistaking his slow pace as an easier path towards heavy drama. Fatal Move only comes alive in occasional bits mostly due to the many veterans cast here like Sammo Hung, Simon Yam, Maggie Siu and Danny Lee who give some characters more punch. All those veterans also bring a familiarity to most fans that can carry occasional scenes as it is always a joy to see, let’s say, Danny Lee doing his old cop number as he chastises crime bosses Hung and Yam. Some of the action can be good too, if a bit over the top until Wu Jing-Sammo Hung final bout which is as fine as expected, but can’t redeem everything that comes before it.

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).