Movie Review: Three

Three

Directed by: Johnnie To.   

Written by: Ho Leung Lau & Tin Shu Mak & Nai-Hoi Yau. 

Starring: Louis Koo (Chief inspector Chan), Wei Zhao (Dr. Tong Qian), Wallace Chung (Shun). 

 

At his best, Johnnie To is earns the comparison to the best action filmmakers his country, Hong Kong, has ever produced. Perhaps he hasn’t made the move to Hollywood yet – and at this point, probably never will – because his style of action filmmaking – smooth camera movements, expert choreography – is at odds with the current, favored Hollywood style of nothing but kinetic energy, rapid fire editing and shaky camera movement. His newest film, Three, isn’t one of his best – I still like the underseen Life Without Principle (2011), although you cannot go wrong with Drug War (2012) either. It almost seems like it’s a film To made as an interesting challenge to himself – can he confine himself to a single location, and still make his film thrillingly cinematic in the same way. The answer, mainly, is yes. 

 

The story takes place in a hospital. Gangster Shun (Wallace Chung) is brought into the ER with a bullet in the head – he put the bullet there himself, not because he wanted to die, but because he was about to be arrested, so he shoots himself in a such a way that they need to bring to the hospital, but which he believes will not kill him. Chan (Louis Koo), is the aging cop, who has been after Shun and his gang for a long time, and doesn’t trust his new prisoner, and wants to ensure they have eyes on him at all times. Dr. Tong (Wei Zhao) is the gifted surgeon, who in the opening we see not being successful, as someone dies on her operating table. Her boss isn’t overly thrilled with her – he thinks she has too much confidence in her abilities, and opinions – which makes her question herself a little when Shun comes in. He refuses surgery at first – he’s waiting for a rescue more than anything – although she knows without it, he’ll likely die – not right away, but soon enough.

 

The action never leaves the hospital, although To’s camera follows his characters through the corridors, and various rooms, and back out again, never resting for long. He tells you everything you need to know about his characters quickly – trusting his actors to convery a lot with body language. Like Michael Mann’s films, these character are entirely defined by their careers and actions – they aren’t given long monologues, or even dialogues, to explain themselves. Shun knows there are rules that both Tong and Chan are obligated to follow (although, he also knows that Tong is more likely to actually follow them) – and he exploits that. Chan, a man of few words, cannot really tell a doctor what to do with a patient with a bullet in their head.

 

The whole thing builds to an action climax – a grand shootout that some have compared to the opening sequence of John Woo’s Hard Boiled. That’s a grand claim, and one the film cannot live up to. Yes, it’s a great sequence in its own right, but the shootout in Hard Boiled is arguably the greatest of all time, and Three simply cannot compare.

 

As a whole, Three doesn’t add up to very much. I do think that To liked the idea of trying to take a single location, and confine himself there, to see what he could come up with visually. He finds a way to make the whole thing look interesting. The plot isn’t particularly original – we know where it’s going from the beginning is, and the characters are rather thinly drawn. But, at under 90 minutes, it’s a fun little film. No, it’s nowhere near To’s best work – but even minor To has its charms.

Movie Review: Drug War

Drug War
Directed by: Johnnie To.
Written by: Wai Ka-Fai & Yau Nai-hoi & Ryker Chan & Yu Xi.
Starring: Louis Koo (Timmy Choi), Sun Honglei (Captain Zhang Lei), Crystal Huang (Yang Xiaobei), Wallace Chung (Guo Weijun), Gao Yunxiang (Xu Guoxiang), Li Guangjie (Chen Shixiong), Guo Tao (Senior Dumb), Li Jing (Junior Dumb), Lo Hoi-pang (Birdie), Eddie Cheung (Su), Gordon Lam (East Lee), Michelle Ye (Sal), Lam Suet (Fatso).

If Hong Kong action master Johnnie To was going to have a breakout hit in North America, it probably would have happened by now. He has been working steadily since 1980 – so he was making films when the likes of John Woo, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam were all the rage among North American film geeks in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But To never quite had their success. By the time he came to the attention of international critics – after several film festivals (including Cannes and Toronto) starting programming his films in the early 2000s, film geeks had movie on to other Asian film hotspots – namely the extreme horror coming out of Japan and Korea. And that’s a shame, because To is one of the best action filmmakers in the world right now – and one of the most prolific. He has 55 directing credits according to IMDB – 23 of them since the first of his films that I saw – Fulltime Killer back in 2001. I’ve still only seen a select few of his films – and while not all of them are great – they are all usually better than the average American action film. His latest, Drug War, is no different.

Drug War is not an overly original movie. It’s plot – about a Hong Kong drug dealer arrested by police in Mainland China and forced to become an informant – has been told before. The scenes in which the main cop – Captain Zhang (Sun Honglei) has to go undercover, and the drug dealer Timmy Choi (Louis Koo) has to pretend to me something he’s not will likely remind viewers of Infernal Affairs – or it’s American remake, The Departed. It is also not really a thorough examination of drug policy – in China, being a drug dealer will get you a death sentence. The movie doesn’t question such a policy, and really stops just short of actively endorsing it. Given that this is the first time To has ventured to mainland China for financing – normally he stays in Hong Kong – and the government oversight that comes along with that, it’s probably not overly surprising. But the film still does observe the thin line between cop and criminal – and while that’s not quite as original as what To did in last year’s Life Without Principle – essentially saying bankers and gangsters are the same – it’s still an effective theme to build a good action movie around.

So in the movie, Choi gets caught after a meth lab explosion that he escapes – but he ends up driving erratically and crashing into a restaurant. Knowing he faces a death sentence, he quickly agrees to Zhang’s offer to become an informant. Choi has a contact with one drug dealer, who he is arranging a meeting with China’s premiere Drug kingpin – and can get Zhang all the details. And since these drug dealers have never met each other – Zhang ends up playing too completely opposite dealers in the span of a few minutes to set both of them up to take the fall. The film also involves some deaf brothers who cook meth – and a group of Hong Kong gangsters pulling the strings. And of course, there will be lots of shootouts to climax the movie.

The material in Drug War is fairly standard – but To wraps it up in an entertaining package. It’s amusing to see the stoic Zhang at first take on the even more stoic persona of one drug dealer, than go gleefully over the top in the next scene, taking on the persona of a drug dealer known as Haha – because he laughs at just about everything. These scenes are also tense, since we are never quite sure when violence is about to erupt.

The shootout that ends Drug War – as all Hong Kong action movies have to end in a shootout – is the best of its kind I’ve seen in a movie so far this year. While To may be from Hong Kong, his action stylistics are quite different from the “bullet ballets” preferred by a director like John Woo. To’s action sequences are cleaner and simpler than Woo’s – but much more coherent than the typical action sequence in an American movie, which deploy shaky cameras and rapid fire editing to the point of incoherence at times. With To, you always know what is going on, and he expertly stages these scenes with ease.

Drug War is not as ambitious as To’s best films – Election, Election 2 or the aforementioned Life Without Principle for example. But it is brutally effective – and contains one of the best performances in any Too film from Louis Koo as Choi – a man who will do anything to survive, so of course, we know he’s doomed.

Movie Review: Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle
Directed by: Johnnie To.
Written by: Kin-Yee Au & Ka-kit Cheung & Ben Wong & Nai-Hoi Yau & Tin-Shing Yip.
Starring: Lau Ching Wan (Panther), Richie Ren (Cheung Ching Fong), Denise Ho (Teresa), Myolie Wu (Connie), Lo Hoi-pang (Yuen), So Hang-suen (investor).

Every time I watch a Johnnie To movie, I anxiously await the gunfights. More than any other filmmaker in Hong Kong right now, To is the one who has taken over for the likes of John Woo as an expert action filmmaker. His gunfights in films like Breaking News, Election and Election II, Vengeance and Full Time Killer (to name but a few of his films) are expertly crafted, and unlike American action films, not cut to shit with rapid fire editing. John Woo described his films as ballet with bullets, and To has a similar style. He is one of the best action film directors in the world right now.

This was very much the case when I sat down to watch his latest. Life Without Principle. But a strange thing happened as I watched the film – I got so invested in the different characters in the movie, the expertly crafted story, and the fast paced storytelling employed by To, that I barely noticed that he didn’t have any action set pieces in the film at all. By the end of the movie, I realized that I had seen perhaps To’s best film to date – and it didn’t even contain the type of action he is best known for.

The movie basically has three plot threads – all of them revolving around the financial crisis. In the first one, we see a woman whose job it is to sell stocks to people for a major Hong Kong bank. Obviously, the riskier the stock, the more than bank wants to sell it – and she has a quota to meet and could be out of a job if she doesn’t meet it. The problem is, anyone who knows about stocks, knows that the bank are ripping you off with bank fees and would rather invest themselves for far less – and anyone who doesn’t know about stocks, shouldn’t be investing in this sort of stock anyway, which means you have to lie to them to get them to buy. It appears her co-workers have no problem with doing so – but she has a conscience.

The second story line is about a group of gangsters. Even they seem to have trouble raising funds recently – their once posh banquets have now fallen on hard time, with fewer tables and fancily named vegetarian entrées to disguise the fact that they are cheap. They have even lost some of the ranks to the financial trade themselves – you can’t make enough money being a gangster, so you may as well trade stock. Panther is perhaps the only loyal gangster left – he hopes from one of his “sworn brothers” to the next, getting them all out of jams.

The third story line is about a police Inspector, who is called out to several crimes throughout the movie (he really is the unifying character of the movie). While he appears to be just a cop with no involvement in the financial crisis, his wife gets him involved anyway – going from wanting to buy a new apartment, to insisting they do so when they unexpectantly become the guardians of the little sister he didn’t even know he had. Of course, she buys at just the wrong time – when the bottom starts to fall out.

To weaves these stories together with ruthless efficiency. There is murder and bloodshed in the film to be sure, but it’s low-key compared to most of To’s other efforts. The message is simple and direct – there really is no difference between the cutthroat world of high finance and the cutthroat world of gangsters. Like last year’s Margin Call, Life Without Principle shows just how far bankers will go to make money – not caring who they hurt in the process. Of the two, I think I prefer this one – To’s film is less preachy than Margin Call, and a hell of a lot more entertaining. Sure, the ending could use a little work (I don’t think it needs the happy ending that gets tacked on here), but overall I think Life Without Principle shows To at the height of his powers – even if there are no gunfights to speak of.

Movie Review: Vengeance

Vengeance *** ½
Directed By: Johnnie To.
Written By: Wai Ka Fai
Starring: Johnny Hallyday (Costello), Sylvie Testud (Irene Thompson), Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (Kwai), Ka Tung Lam (Chu), Suet Lam (Lok), Simon Yam (George Fung), Siu-Fai Cheung (Wolf), Felix Wong (Python), Ting Yip Ng (Crow), Maggie Siu (Inspector Wong), Vincent Sze (Mr. Thompson).

Johnnie To is among the most prolific directors working anywhere in the world right now. In the past decade alone, he has directed 23 films. While I would hardly call myself an expert on his films – having only seen a handful - I will say that To is among the best action movie directors in the world right now. While many of his compatriots from Hong Kong have fled and gone to Hollywood to make their films, To has stayed put in Hong Kong, and carried the torch, at times seemingly by himself. His films mark a refreshing departure from the trend in Hollywood action filmmaking towards making everything bigger, louder and faster – and the tendency to edit action sequences so fast that the audience becomes disoriented. In To’s films, there are always multiple action set pieces, and all of them are expertly crafted. He stages gun battles with more skill than anyone since the early days of John Woo. As an action filmmaker, he is second to no one in the world right now.

His new film Vengeance may not quite be the masterwork that his film Election, Election II, Exiled, Breaking News or even Mad Detective were, but it is still one of the most entertaining action movies in recent years. It stars the “French Elvis”, Johnny Hallyday as an aging man who comes to Hong Kong to avenge the murder of his grandkids and son in law, during an attack that also left his daughter barely clinging to life. For unknown reasons, he has not been close to his daughter in recent years, and had in fact never even met his grandkids. But, his family is still important to him, and he needs to find out what happened and why – and make whoever is responsible for it pay.

The added wrinkle in the movie is that Hallyday is losing his memory. He has to keeps notes of everything, or he forgets. When he gets a hold of the crime scene photos, he writes on each one a single word – Vengeance. When he meets a team of hit man – Kwai (Anthony Wong), Chu (Ka Tung Lam) and Lok (Suet Lam), and hires them to help find who killed his family, he takes Polaroids of them and writes their name, and the fact that they are his friend, on them. He tells these hit men that he is a chef in Paris, and owns a nice restaurant. He offers them a lot of money, and even says that he will give them his restaurant if they help him. The trio agree, thinking they’ve met an easy mark in this old French man, but quickly they realize that he is not who he appears to be. His expertise with guns makes it apparent that while he maybe a chef now, at some point, he may have done exactly what they do now. Once they start investigating, the trail quickly leads them to Fung (Simon Yam), a flamboyant gangster, who has employed the hit men in the past. The guilt associated with the fact that the three hit men could have easily had gotten the call to kill Hallyday’s family (and would have accepted it), makes them more loyal to him than they might otherwise had been. They genuinely like the guy, and feel sorry for his loss.

In many ways, Vengeance is a typical revenge drama and action movie. The storyline is fairly straight forward, and it’s not too long before the three hit men and Hallyday go out and start mowing down bad guys. The action sequences are certainly the highlight of the movie. A gun battle that erupts after a nighttime family picnic, the battle in a junkyard, with huge square of waste (think of what Wall-E produced, and just increase the size) as shields, and particularly the final showdown, where Hallyday, his memory pretty much gone, goes after Fung and his henchmen by himself in the streets of Hong Kong are all brilliant action set pieces, meticulously crafted and executed by To. This is how shootouts in the movies are supposed to be done.

But the movie is more than just a well executed action movie. Hallyday is a genuinely gifted actor (see his work in Patrice Leconte’s Man on the Train for example), and he makes his character into a sympathetic man, and a sort of tragic figure. He may end up getting his vengeance, but if he has forgotten why he wanted it in the first place, will it really matter? The great Anthony Wong (who Western audiences probably, unfortunately, know him best for his role in The Mummy 3 last year, but has done great work in Hong Kong for years, particularly in the Infernal Affairs trilogy, where he originated the role played by Martin Sheen in The Departed) is very effective as the leader of the hit men Hallyday hires. And Simon Yam, a favorite of To’s, is wonderful as the over the top gangster. He is not just a mustache twirling mad man, but something for more insidious – a businessman with no conscience.

So while the plot of the movie is merely incidental and by the numbers, the execution of the movie is anything but. Vengeance may not be the best film of To’s long career, but it puts to shame almost any American action movie you will see this year. This is a very entertaining film, with some dark undertones that elevate beyond the realm of the revenge thriller.