Last Updated on January 22, 2021 by rob
A hilarious, violent and sweetly touching tribute to the solidarity of Hongkies everywhere, this crime comedy from Johnnie To’s production outfit Milky Way is directed by Wai Ka-Fai with such gonzo energy courtesy of Wong Wing-Hang’s virtuoso hand-held camerawork that it leaves you breathless. Watching it one can understand just why Quentin Tarantino rates this film as one of his favourites. Milky Way regular Lau Ching-Wan stars as Kau, the good-hearted but incompetent leader of a gang of starving Hong Kong street punks. Opening with Kau having his fortune told – the precise message of which is cleverly concealed from us until the end of the film – the story then presents us with two alternate realities.
In the first, Kau and his mates take a fast boat to China to do a deal with a local gang but end up dying in a shootout. In the other they become a success. It’s a simple idea but this rags to riches tale is executed with such vigour and an unerring ability to pivot from black comedy to genuine pathos, to evoke laughs, empathy, horror and one bitterly ironic ending in which Kau gains the success he was seeking but at a cost he never envisaged, that all you can do is hang on for the (wild) ride. This is a great discovery and a genre movie fully deserving of some serious attention.
