Tag: Carlos Chan Ka-Lok

Connected (保持通話, Benny Chan, 2008)

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A kidnapped woman’s only hope is a distant stranger in Benny Chan’s intense thriller, Connected (保持通話). Inspired by 2004’s Cellular, Chan shifts the action to contemporary Hong Kong with all of its global anxieties but eventually insists that we are all in a sense connected and have a responsibility to each other in the face of corrupt authorities and an increasingly selfish society. In contrast to other techno thrillers, technology is not threat but cure enabling unlikely alliances and facilitating justice both legal and emotional as the heroes work together yet apart to unscramble the shady threat that follows them. 

Mainlander and top robotics engineer Grace Wong (Barbie Hsu) is having a fairly normal day dropping her daughter Tinker off at school before heading into work only to be blindsided by an oncoming truck and stolen away to a secret location. With no clue what’s going on she realises the landline in the shack where they’re keeping her is still connected but one of the goons smashes it before she can get through to anyone. Using her engineering skills she’s able to rewire the surviving bits but can only make random connections which is how she ends up getting through to conflicted debt collector Bob (Louis Koo) who has problems of his own as his son, raised by his sister after his wife’s death, is supposed to be emigrating to Australia this very day and will forever lose faith in his father for his constant disappointments if he doesn’t make it to the airport by 3pm. 

Bob’s buried goodness is immediately signalled by his discomfort with his job as he watches the more violent members of crew harass and intimidate a lone woman and her crying children in an ironic mirror of his son and Grace’s daughter both also in tears while pulled into the orbit of vicious outside forces. Though originally reluctant, assuming he’s on the receiving hand of a prank call, Bob soon comes to realise that Grace and also her daughter are in real danger and after an early attempt to enlist the police fails he is the only one who can save her. Nevertheless, he is torn between conflicting responsibilities, this one to a stranger and the other to his son who has entirely lost faith in him because of his broken promises and internalised shame over the nature of his job. He finds himself doing quite extraordinary things to keep both promises which further mark him out as a “good person”, such as firing a gun at the floor to get the attention of a bored shop clerk who’d been trolling him but then insisting on paying the full amount for his phone charger and not even stopping for the change. 

Even so, there’s further conflict on the horizon when it turns out the crooks, led by a spooky Mainlander, are carrying Interpol badges leaving a huge question mark about what’s really going on, who the good guys are in this situation and whose side everyone else is on. Unthinkable in the current cinematic climate, the spectre of police corruption raises its ugly head though despite having failed to respond when originally hailed wronged hero cop Fai (Nick Cheung) eventually jumps into action after noticing something suspicious enabling Bob to fulfil his heroic missions and followthrough on his promises. 

Filled dry black humour, Chan’s worldview is tinged with an irony that also makes its way into the extremely elaborate action sequences including a car chase that later plows through an entire truck of Pepsi Max, and a flirtatious boyfriend who swears to protect his lady love for all eternity only to run off at the first sign of danger. Yet there’s also an idealistic faith in human goodness in Bob and Fai’s refusal to back down in the face of injustice, each of them somewhat revitalised in their quests to rescue Grace whose engineering skills made the whole thing possible in the first place along with her determination of save herself and protect her family. It really is all connected, the intricate, slow burn mystery gradually revealing itself thanks to the growing connection between the heroes, each of them strangers but stepping up when needed unable to abandon someone in danger while refusing to allow corrupt authority to treat their homeland with such contempt.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

The Goldfinger (金手指, Felix Chong Man-keung, 2023)

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Following Wong Jing’s Chasing the Dragon and Philip Yung’s Where the Wind Blows, Felix Chong’s financial thriller The Goldfinger (金手指) is the latest in a series of Hong Kong films revolving around colonial-era corruption in which the apparent lawlessness of the pre-Handover society allowed crime to flourish along with a nascent greed nurtured by the island’s rising prosperity as an increasingly important financial centre. In an ironic touch, the film even opens with mass protests against the introduction of ICAC with protestors calling for more respect for law enforcement officers while implying some dark authoritarian force is in play even as angry policemen demand the right to immunity from their own misconduct.

In any case, what arises is a cat and mouse game between wily conman/entrepreneur Henry Ching (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and ICAC investigator Lau (Andy Lau Tak-Wah) who chases him for 15 years trying to expose his web of financial fraud. A failed businessman on the run from debt having supposedly abandoned an idealistic desire to build homes for people, Ching arrives in Hong Kong seeking a land of opportunity and largely finds it though through dubious means. Teaming up with similarly embittered businessman KK (Simon Yam Tat-Wah), who is resentful towards his family who treat him with disdain for being a mistress’ son and force him to do their dirty work, to build a giant real-estate based empire that is in reality rooted in complex financial fraud.

Working on the rationale that stocks can be spent like money, Ching makes contacts and manipulates markets which is all very well as long as no one asks for the cash because it doesn’t exist. Chong hints at the realities of the housing market in Hong Kong today in which land is at a premium and apartments largely unattainable as Ching alternately allies with and subverts British rule to build a property empire, setting his sights on acquiring prestigious Golden Hill building as symbol of a new Hong Kong and his own hubristic desire for personal success. With shades of Wolf of Wall Street and The Great Beauty, Ching attends soirees organised by the British and puts on a show for his targets. In his attempts to woo a British bank, his office is suddenly invaded by salsa dancers and gold glitter falls from the ceiling much to the chagrin of a bemused and increasingly mistrustful KK.

Even so the title of the film is echoed in a comment Ching makes to Lau that though he may thinks he’s some genius with the Midas touch he’s really just a patsy, pushing him to investigate possible international conspiracy that is bigger than either of them. Ching has already become a legend with a series of stories about how he made his stake money which range from running into Imelda Marcos in a shoe shop and getting backing from the oppressive regime in the Philippines, to narrowly escaping a war zone and catching a CIA spy in Moscow. He even has the hutzpah to attempt to bribe Lau by offering him a vast fortune and a scholarship for his daughter to study abroad if only he’d find a way to nix the case.

The corruption is indeed embedded, as is obvious when a judge with a posh British accent actively welcomes Ching to the court in a friendly manner and suggests they conduct their business swiftly to avoid any unnecessary turmoil to the Hong Kong economy. Friends in high places largely assist him, whether through personal greed or blackmail though as another of his associates admits, in the end there is no real loyalty among thieves only increasing fear and desperation along with resentment that Ching seems to be taking more than his fair share of the loot. Loosely based on the Carrian Group scandal, the film never loses sight of the damage one man’s greed and duplicity can do as millions of Hong Kong citizens find themselves out of pocket and uncompensated when the shares they bought become worthless, but equally suggests that in the end justice will always be denied to ordinary people while men like Ching will never fully pay for their crimes. With gorgeous production design, Chong beautifully the woozy world of Hong Kong in the ’70s and ’80s amid an intense cat and mouse game of financial fraudsters and a compromised authority.

The Goldfinger previews from 30th December ahead of opening in UK cinemas 5th January courtesy of CineAsia.

UK trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

All U Need Is Love (總是有愛在隔離, Vincent Kok Tak-chiu, 2021)

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All things considered, there are worse places to quarantine than a five star hotel especially if it’s free but then again forced proximity with those you love, or those you don’t, can prove emotionally difficult. An old school ensemble comedy, Vincent Kok’s All U Need Is Love (總是有愛在隔離) features a host of A-list stars each providing their talent for free in order to support the struggling Hong Kong film industry in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic but as its name suggests eventually offers a small ray of hope that the enforced period of reflection may have fostered a spirit of mutual solidarity and personal growth. 

Kok opens, however, with a tense chase sequence as a shifty looking man runs from the authorities at the airport only to be picked up by the PPE-clad Epidemic Task Force who whisk him away to a secret location where he’s placed inside a weird bubble and interrogated by Louis Koo. Several more top HK stars including Gordon Lam fetch up in the bubble each implicating the Grande Hotel as the centre of of a coronavirus cluster at which point an order is given to place it under total lockdown requiring everyone inside to remain for a 14-day quarantine. 

Essentially a series of intersecting skits, Kok’s ramshackle drama nevertheless has its moments of satire as the hotel chief takes to the stairs for an inspirational speech in which he frequently slips into English and bizarrely likens himself to the captain of the Titanic because we all know how well that went. He spends the rest of the picture trying to escape without anyone noticing while his dejected security guard/brother tries to bump him off. Meanwhile, two gangsters develop a homoerotic bromance while plotting how best to profiteer off the pandemic through smuggling anti-COVID paraphernalia just as panic buying takes hold on the outside. 

Nevertheless, it can’t be denied that All U Need Is Love is also guilty of some rather old fashioned, sexist humour particularly in the antics of a pair of old men (Tony Leung Ka-Fai and Eric Tsang reprising their roles from Men Suddenly in Black) and their minions who misled their wives in order to embark on a sexual odyssey only to have their plans both improved and then ruined by the quarantine order. Meanwhile, a young couple who were in the hotel preparing for their wedding banquet ironically scheduled for the last day of the quarantine find themselves at loggerheads as the man gets cold feet over his fiancée’s bridezilla micromanaging, and her father undergoes a total makeover while continuously watching Japanese pornography in his room. 

Watching it all, a little girl, Cici, becomes the moral voice of the pandemic innocently hoping that nature will continue to heal itself even after the sickness ends. It’s she who shows the gangsters the error of their ways in pointing out that if they steal all the anti-COVID equipment then they will end up being more at risk because no one else is protected, while she also softens the heart of the hotel’s cynical manager to the point that he too makes a lengthy speech about becoming a better person thanks to his experiences during in the pandemic. 

During their enforced proximity friends and strangers have indeed needed to rediscover their love for their fellow man as they band together in mutual solidarity waiting for their freedom. Culminating in an oddly uplifting wedding decked out with balloons and messages from friends and family played via iPad, Kok’s anarchic ensemble farce does its best to discover a silver lining among the fear and anxiety of the pandemic as it ironically brings people together through driving them apart. Along with his A-list cast, Kok throws in a series of movie parodies and pop culture references from an impromptu rendition of Baby Shark to a surprise appearance from the Landlady from Kung Fu Hustle as well as a suitably random cameo from Jackie Chan. Repurposing the traditional Lunar New Year movie, All U Need is Love is a classic nonsense comedy designed to lighten the mood in these trying times while celebrating the essence of Hong Kong cinema through, arguably, its most idiosyncratic of genres. 

All U Need Is Love streamed as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese/English subtitles)

Ready O/R Knot (不日成婚, Anselm Chan, 2021)

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After two people have been together a significant amount of time, it might start occurring to others that really they ought to be married. Perhaps it even starts occurring to one or both of the two people too, but should you really make such a big decision based only on the fact that it’s the done thing rather than something you actively want to do? That’s a dilemma that presents itself to the young couple at the centre of Anselm Chan’s marital farce, Ready O/R Knot (不日成婚). While she would like a further degree of certainly in their relationship, he fears commitment along with a loss of freedom and authority as a family man with responsibilities perhaps greater than he feels he can bear. What ensues is an accidental battle of the sexes as each partner teams up with their respective allies to trick the other into going along with their plan. 

Guy (Carlos Chan Ka-Lok) and Ho-yee (Michelle Wai Si-Nga) have been together for five years after meeting at the wedding of Guy’s friend Grey Bear (Chu Pak Hong) and Ho-yee’s bestie Jen (Hedwig Tam Sin-yin). Grey Bear and Jen now have two children, but there is already an air of superficial duplicity in the relationship, Grey Bear using his friends to help him visit illicit sex services in Macao in rebellion against the tyranny of marriage. While the women quietly suggest to Ho-yee that it’s time they got married and left to his own devices Guy will continue to drag his feet, the guys are are determined to dissuade him viewing it somehow as a defeat of masculinity. They fear being tied down and mock other men for being in thrall to their wives while the women seem to fear that their men are duplicitous and unreliable and that therefore they need this additional level of protection. Nevertheless, the moment the marriage debate has begun, the relationship undergoes further strain and scrutiny even as each party descends into sometimes worryingly unethical levels of scheming in order to get their own way. 

It has to be said that for much of its run time, Ready O/R Knot reflects some extremely sexist, hopefully outdated social attitudes while making occasionally off-colour jokes about domestic violence and drugging one’s spouse without their knowledge or consent. At a low moment, Guy finds himself swallowing a morning after pill and thereafter gaining a sudden empathy for women on experiencing what he assumes is akin to period pain, lying on the sofa clutching a copy of Marie Claire while his friend who has also taken one in solidarity eats chocolate ice cream directly from the carton. Grey Bear thinks he was tricked into marriage by Jen’s plan to seduce him to forego protection thereby engineering an accidental pregnancy, which is why Guy has been avoiding intimacy with Ho-yee hoping to avoid being “trapped” in the same fashion. 

A perpetual man child, Guy resists the trappings of adulthood, reluctant to sell his two-person scooter and learn to drive a family car while remaining obsessed with football, his PS4, and hanging out with his sleazy, sexist friends. As the crisis intensifies, however, it leads Ho-yee towards a more progressive realisation, advised by her wise old grandmother (Siu Yam-yam) that she should learn to put herself first for a change and strive for her own happiness rather than that of her man. Guy begins to realise what he’s at risk of losing, but his late in the game epiphany isn’t in the end enough to repair the damage his diffidence has caused, returning agency once again to Ho-yee who has learned to ask for more, that her own hopes and desires are just as important as Guy’s, and that “marriage” is not in itself “the point”.

Buried underneath some of those sexist attitudes is a basic fear and tinge of toxic masculinity as Guy realises his reluctance is partly insecurity that he’ll fail as a husband, unable to “provide for” (apparently something he regards as a male responsibility, simultaneously mocking Grey Bear for living off his wealthy wife) Ho-yee or to make her truly “happy”. Only after undergoing a humbling and being willing to pursue the relationship on a more equal footing is he finally given a second chance, noting that Ho-yee should not be expected to sacrifice herself for their relationship to succeed while he has resolutely refused to invest in their mutual future by clinging to his individual past. Simultaneously cynical about the institution of “marriage” yet somehow eager to believe in the power of love and commitment, Ready O/R Knot takes a moment to make up its mind but in the end comes down on the side of equality in romance as its warring lovers eventually call a truce in rediscovering what it is that’s really important. 

Ready O/R Knot screens at Chicago’s Lincoln Yards Drive-in on May 2 as part of the 12th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (English / Traditional Chinese subtitles)

Legally Declared Dead (死因無可疑, Steve Yuen Kim-Wai, 2019) [Fantasia 2020]

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“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” a well-meaning insurance agent is advised in Steve Yuen Kim-Wai’s Legally Declared Dead (死因無可疑), though he struggles to fully understand its meaning and in the end you have to wonder how good his intentions really were. Yusuke Kishi’s novel The Black House has been adapted twice before, firstly in an idiosyncratically absurdist take by Yoshimitsu Morita, and then in Korea by Shin Terra who remained firmly within the realms of contemporary K-horror. Yuen lands somewhere between the two, adopting a stylish veneer of neo noir as the traumatised hero has his worldview upended by heinous immorality. 

Yet as Wing-shun (Carlos Chan Ka-Lok) tells Ching (Stephen Au Kam-tong), the office investigator, he’s just a broker and it doesn’t do to be suspicious of all his clients. A nice, well mannered young man, Wing-shun is all poised customer service charm, but he also firmly believes that the business of insurance is a noble good, that he’s helping people by being there for them when disaster strikes. As such, he doesn’t like to think that people are abusing the system, and is reluctant to reject a claim. On the other hand, he calms a pair of panicked gangsters who are most definitely on the fiddle by explaining that neither he nor his colleague can help them because being a broker is like being a dealer at the casino, they can only push the paperwork to the floor manager who alone has the authority to decide whether or not to pay out and wait for their instructions. 

Wing-shun’s casino metaphor is more true than he intends it, what else is insurance after all than a kind of gambling? Wing-shun can tell himself he’s there to provide relief and support in times of need, but really he’s betting against misery which might be better than betting in its favour but it’s still wagering people’s lives. That fact’s brought home to him when he takes a call late one evening from a man who asks him if they pay out on suicide. Cheerful as ever, Wing-shun asks for his policy number to check the paperwork before realising the darkness inherent in the question and telling the person on the other end of the phone not to do anything rash, “money doesn’t solve everything”. The man simply asks for his name and then abruptly hangs up. Wing-shun chalks it up to just another weird thing that sometimes happens and forgets about it but the next day he’s told that a client has personally requested him to talk over their policy and wants a home visit to a rural location outside the city. A little bemused, Wing-shun does as he’s told and encounters Chu Chun-tak (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang), not realising he’s the man from the phone only noticing he’s behaving quite strangely. Suddenly Chun-tak starts shouting for his son Kafu and gesturing to another room inside which Wing-shun discovers the boy hanging. 

The boy’s death triggers painful memories for Wing-shun who is burdened with a sense of guilt over the death of his older brother in childhood. Unable to escape the idea he’s been set up and Chun-tak only invited him out here to “find” the body, Wing-shun is convinced that he killed Kafu in order to claim his life insurance payout. Kafu was Chun-tak’s stepson and also had learning difficulties, while Chun-tak’s wife Shum Chi-ling (Karena Lam Ka-Yan) is partially sighted and walks with a pronounced limp. Wing-shun is particularly worried because Chun-tak also has a policy on her and it’s reasonable to assume she’ll be next in the firing line. He struggles, however, to convince others of his suspicions. The policeman investigating closes the case when the autopsy comes back with suicide as the cause of death, attributing the motive to exam stress, while the insurance company fails to find evidence to deny the claim.  

Unlike the other adaptations, Legally Declared Dead keeps the suicide option on the table while Wing-shun begins to go quietly out of his mind. Meanwhile, his psychology student girlfriend (Kathy Yuen Ka-Yee) hooks him up with her dubious professor (Liu Kai-chi) who is studying the “criminal personality” and claims that while some people commit crime because of trauma and desire a few so because they’re simply born bad and can never be saved. These people, he says, are manipulative narcissists who often exploit the vulnerable, making them a kind of “slave”. Professor Kam becomes overly invested in Wing-shun’s case, convinced on meeting him that Chun-tak is a clear case of “criminal personality”, murdered his son, and is almost certainly going to murder his wife. But is it really fair to decide someone’s killed their child just because they’re a bit odd and admittedly desperate for money, aren’t they just being judgemental and prejudiced? Come to that, is it sexist and ablest to assume that Chi-ling is naive and powerless, that she is a potential victim and could not have been involved in her son’s death or conversely maybe planning to off her husband?

Wing-shun lives with a collection of rare insects including a few praying mantises, which he states cannot be caged in pairs because the female will devour the male, but he continues to think of Chi-ling as sweet and harmless seeing her tenderly calm her husband down after starting to accompany him on their daily visits to the insurance office to ask about the money. On the other hand, with her limp and milky eye Chi-ling is also uncomfortably coded as villainous in an unpleasant alignment of physical deformity and “evil”, while Chun-tak is also assumed to be abusive largely because he struggles to communicate in the “normal” way. 

Nevertheless, the idea that some people are deliberately maiming themselves to claim on “workers’ insurance” either at their own behest or forced into it by loansharking gangsters pursuing gambling debts is presented as no real surprise just another element of a cynical and duplicitous society. Wing-shun knew this, but perhaps didn’t really believe it. The Chu case exposes to him the ugliness of the world in which he lives, raising with it old memories of his childhood trauma, the very kind of trauma which professor Kam insists causes some to commit crimes. Becoming fixated on the idea of Chun-tak as a murder, Wing-shun descends into nervous paranoia but is perhaps less interested in getting justice for Kafu and protecting Chi-ling than vindicating himself and defending the “nobility” of insurance as a concept for social good while avoiding dealing with his own childhood trauma in refusing his responsibility towards his brother. 

Shooting the pulpy material with a stylish, B-movie sheen, Yuen closes with a Silence of the Lambs-inspired climax which sees Wing-shun venture alone into the nest of a killer, repeatedly blinded by ultraviolet light and denied the ability to fully asses his reality. He thinks he finally understands Ching’s caution that the “road to hell is paved with good intentions” which he perhaps had in his desire to get justice for Kafu and protect Chi-ling, but in the end he might have to admit that the killer had a point when they said he  was “just like me”, a “criminal personality” consumed by latent violence caused by unresolved childhood trauma. “You do what you need to to survive, you scam people and they scam you” Wing-shun’s friend shrugs, but it’s a lesson Wing-shun learns all too well, once again refusing his responsibility as a secondary victim looks to him for help but discovers only cold and cynical resentment.

Legally Declared Dead streamed as part of this year’s online edition of Fantasia International Film Festival. It will also be available to stream in New York State on Sept. 5 only as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Rescue (紧急救援, Dante Lam, 2020)

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The rescue poster 3

It’s tempting to see Dante Lam’s latest foray into big budget mainland action as a continuation of his previous hits Operation Mekong and Operation Red Sea which paid tribute to the police and navy respectively, but it is also the latest in a series of films featuring China’s finest bravely battling against the odds to save the day. Like Tony Chan’s The Bravest which celebrated the selfless heroism of China’s firemen as they risked their lives to stop a potentially catastrophic fire in an oil refinery, The Rescue (紧急救援, Jǐnjí Jiùyuán) pays tribute to another undersung arm of the emergency services – China’s Coast Guard.

Our hero, Captain Gao Qian (Eddie Peng Yu-yen) of China Rescue And Salvage, is a devil-may-care hero who throws himself into danger without a second thought where lives are at stake. The motto of China Rescue And Salvage is “we risk our lives to give others hope”, but some feel that Gao Qian is too reckless with his and fear that he’s forgotten that you can’t save anyone if you get yourself killed playing at heroics. That’s something that’s temporarily brought home to him when the pilot of his helicopter is badly injured during a rescue on an oil rig engulfed by flames, leaving the inexperienced co-pilot to fill-in on his behalf. Gao Qian works his magic in the nick of time, but both of the pilots quit the team immediately afterwards, the pilot struck by the proximity of death and the co-pilot by his sense of inadequacy in feeling as if he failed to live up to the job.

Luckily the team soon get a new pilot – a lady, Yuling (Xin Zhilei), who clashes with Gao Qian in true disaster movie fashion in her desire for rational action and the kind of heroics that are strictly by the book. Against the odds, however, they make a good team, eventually bonding in mutual admiration for their complementary skills. Meanwhile, Gao Qian is also dealing with some home drama in that he’s just brought his young son Congcong (Zhang Jingyi), who had been staying with his grandmother, to live with him. Congcong seems to be suffering with some kind of illness, but is otherwise cheerful enough and hoping that his dad will get him a new mum, like, for example, the beautiful Yuling.

The death of his wife, his son’s illness, and the loss of colleagues he was forced to leave behind, haunt Gao Qian like a cosmic joke, as if he’s being “punished” for snatching so many other lives from the jaws of death. No matter how hard he tries, there are lives which cannot be saved – no helicopter can rescue you from terminal illness or debilitating disease. Nevertheless, he continues to do his best no matter the personal costs. “Everyone has their own battleground, mine is rescue” he tells a superior with determination after his priorities are questioned. In training, the coach reminds the rescuers that their enemy is nature. They push their bodies as far as they can go, willingly risking all to let others know that someone is always looking out for them and will come in their time of need. Faced with certain death, Gao Qian enters an eerily beautiful existential space born of liminality in which he is perhaps able to feel everything that is to be alive while his son, fighting his own battle, does something much the same.

The strangely poetic quality of life in extremis is directly contrasted with the hokey comedy of Gao Qian’s home life and the brotherly comradeship of the base which are both much more of the typical “New Year Movie” mould. Lam fares much better than Chan in heading off the obvious melodrama, though he too resorts to the obvious foreshadowing of a young man daring to get wedding photos taken while planning to risk his life for the greater good, while the quirky production design and wholesome warmth of Gao Qian’s home life as he attempts to make the world safe for his son offer a much needed escape from the anxiety of his disaster-fuelled existence. Unlike that of Red Sea, the world of The Rescue is a more open and hopeful one in which Gao Qian does his best to save everyone who needs saving no matter their nationality, feted far and wide as a hero even if he awkwardly embodies a magnanimous China as a world protector as he does so. Nevertheless, Lam once again manages to elevate his material beyond its propagandist aims, edging towards a more ambivalent contemplation of selfless nobility and the costs of courageous endurance.

In UK cinemas from 25th January courtesy of CMC Pictures. Unfortunately, the release of The Rescue has been postponed because of the Coronavirus outbreak in China. We will update you as soon as we hear of new release date!

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Attorney (一级指控, Wong Kwok-fai, 2019)

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The Attorney poster 1What price justice? Wong Kwok-fai’s legal thriller The Attorney (一级指控) puts an unequal society on trial but discovers that to beat shadiness you might need to get a little shady and a healthy bit of deviousness may serve you well if it’s offered in service of a noble ideal. Then again, it’s a slippery slope towards the abyss if even the proponents of law aren’t above a little judicial finagling to ensure that “justice” gets done in a society which continues to defer to those with the biggest pockets rather than protecting those of meagre means.

We meet our two attorney heroes in the middle of their respective cases. Jaded hot shot Lei You Hui (Alex Fong Chung-sun) is defending a journalist who broke an important story about corruption in the competition for places at prestigious schools from a defamation charge, while the idealist rookie Kelvin (Carlos Chan) is defending a frail old woman held up on a charge of operating without a proper business licence. Lei wins his case, and Kelvin loses. Lei mocks Kelvin’s lack of success, and Kelvin has only contempt for Lei’s cavalier attitude towards the upholding of justice.

The action begins when a 25-year-old man, Lee, is found lying in a pool of blood next to the dead body of a young woman, Ka-yee, who is later discovered to be the daughter of a billionaire businessman, Kwok (Liu Kai-chi). The case seems open and shut. Lee claims he passed out and found the body when he woke up but the circumstantial evidence against him is overwhelming. His grandmother, Chu (Nina Paw Hee-ching), of course believes that he is innocent and enlists the best lawyers she can get access to, leading her to a solicitor who introduces her to Kelvin who is determined to see that the young man gets a fair trial. Lei, meanwhile, has a personal interest in the case in that his late wife was killed in a shopping mall collapse 10 years previously which also took the lives of Lee’s parents. Lei prosecuted a class action law suit, but lost. The shopping mall was constructed by Kwok’s company, which gives him an additional reason to want to help aside from trying to make things up to Lee and Chu whom he feels he failed all those years ago. 

Wong wastes no time in demonstrating that “justice” is a nebulous concept when society is necessarily set up to benefit the rich. Ka-yee’s body was discovered in a building belonging to a property magnate, Tsai Chi-wai (Patrick Tam), who is currently running for political office on a platform of equality for all. Chi-wai is, however, a member of the super rich elite who believes he can do as he pleases because he is protected by his wealth and privilege. Lee, by contrast, is a poor boy delinquent who ordinarily wouldn’t have access to a fancy lawyer to clear his name and most likely would have been torn apart by the elite prosecutor those with vested interests have ensured is attached to the case even though it’s a simple enough affair. 

Yet, as Lei discovers, the roots of corruption lie in the understandable desire to protect one’s children even when they’ve made terrible mistakes. Meeting with Chi-wai’s smarmy father, he discovers a man who talks up his youthful high ideals of union activities and working for the workers but later emphasises his hard won cynicism in insisting that no one with a brain seriously believes in things like truth and justice, only self interest. Tsai wants to protect his son at all costs, if only to protect himself by getting his boy into high office. Meanwhile, Kwok is left with questions about his own responsibility for his daughter’s death. If having literally billions in the bank can’t keep your little girl alive, then what use are they?

Then again, having billions in the bank is pretty useful leverage for getting your own way even if you eventually have a change of heart about enabling societal corruption. Chi-wai snarls that you need to be smart to survive, but according to Kelvin saving lives is more important than winning. Lei, who had given up his lofty ideals after being unable to get “justice” for his wife’s death begins to regain his faith in the law thanks to Kelvin’s influence and the accidental coincidence of getting a kind of revenge on Kwok by showing him the error of his ways in illuminating the truth behind his daughter’s death. To do that, however, he’ll have to bend the law a little which leaves him a compromised figure if for the best of reasons as he wilfully demonstrates the flaws in a legal system which is in itself inherently corrupt in its avowal that everyone is equal before the law while ignoring the fact that not everyone has access to the same level of “justice”. Wong’s conclusion may be a little rosy as even the most jaded of legal minds finds himself minded to rebel against the system, but there’s no denying his purpose as Lei decides to protect his daughter by protecting his society from the forces which threaten to blacken her future.

The Attorney screens in Chicago on Oct. 10 as the closing night gala of the ninth season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema. Actor Kenneth Tsang Kong, scriptwriter Frances To, and xxecutive producer Cherrie Lau will be in attendance for an introduction and Q&A.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The White Storm 2: Drug Lords (掃毒2天地對決, Herman Yau, 2019)

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132134ti38vkkj3p299ni8The war on drugs comes to Hong Kong care of Herman Yau’s latest foray into heroic action, White Storm 2: Drug Lords (掃毒2天地對決). In the grand tradition of Hong Kong movies adding a random prefix to the title, Drug Lords is a “thematic” sequel to Benny Chan’s 2013 hit White Storm, which is to say that it shares nothing at all with Chan’s film save the narcotics theme and the participation of Louis Koo who returns in an entirely different role. What Yau adds to the drama is a possibly irresponsible meditation on vigilante justice and extrajudicial killing which, nevertheless, broadly comes down on the side of the law as its dualist heroes eventually destroy each other in a nihilistic quest for meaningless vengeance.

A brief prologue in 2004 sees depressed Triad Yu Shun-tin (Andy Lau) abandoned by his girlfriend who can no longer put up with his gangster lifestyle and inability to break with his domineering mob boss uncle. Meanwhile, across town, flamboyant foot-soldier Dizang (Louis Koo) scolds one of his guys for supposedly selling drugs in the club, only to be picked up by Shun-tin’s uncle Nam (Kent Cheng) and severely punished for getting involved with the trafficking of narcotics. Nam orders Shun-tin to cut off Dizang’s fingers as punishment, which he does despite Dizang’s reminder that they’ve been friends for over 20 years. Conflicted, Shun-tin makes amends by driving Dizang to the hospital with his fingers in a freezer bag, but by this point Dizang has had enough. To teach him a lesson, the Triads also tip the police off to raid the club, during which the wife of squad leader Lam (Michael Miu) is killed by a drug addled patron.

15 years later, Shun-tin has left the Triads and become a successful businessman married to a beautiful lawyer/financial consultant (Karena Lam) with whom he has started an anti-drugs charity, while Dizang has become Hong Kong’s no. 1 drug dealer, operating out of a slaughterhouse as a cover. The trouble occurs when Shun-tin learns that his former girlfriend was pregnant when she left him and that he has a 15-year-old son in the Philippines who has become addicted to drugs. Drugs have indeed ruined Shun-tin’s life, if indirectly. His grandfather was an opium addict, and his father died of a heroine overdose (which is why his Triad gang swore off the drugs trade). All of which means he has good reason for hating drug dealers like Dizang, but his sudden admiration for Duterte’s famously uncompromising stance on drugs is an extraordinarily irresponsible one, especially when it leads to him embarrassing the HK police force by offering a vast bounty to anyone who can kill Hong Kong’s top drug dealer – a deadly competition that, like extrajudicial killings, seems primed to put ordinary people in the firing line.

As Lam tells him, the situation is absurd. Shun-tin’s bounty means Lam will have to spend more time offering protection to suspected drug dealers than actively trying to catch them while it also leaves Shun-tin in an awkward position as a man inciting murder and attempting to bypass the rule of law through leveraging his wealth. Indeed, as a man from the slums who’s been able to escape his humble origins and criminal family to become an international billionaire philanthropist he shows remarkably little consideration for the situation on the ground or the role the kind of ultra-capitalism he now represents has on perpetuating crime and drug use, preferring to think it’s all as simple as murdering drug lords rather than needing to actively invest in a creating a more equal society.

Meanwhile, Dizang continues to lord it about all over town and Lam finds himself an ineffectual third party caught between summary justice meted out by a man who thinks his wealth places him above the law and a gangster on a self-destructive bid for vengeance against the Triads he feels betrayed him, including his old friend Shun-tin. Truth be told, the “friendship” between Dizang and Shun-tin never rings true enough to provoke the kind of pathos the violent payoff seems to be asking for while the film is at times worryingly uncritical of Shun-tin’s vendetta, suggesting that the police are ill-equipped to deal with the destructive effects of the drug trade. Nevertheless, even if it’s to placate the Mainland censors, Yau ends on a more positive message that reinforces the nihilistic, internecine nature of the conflict while hinting, somewhat tritely, at a better solution in the sunny grasslands of the child drug rehabilitation centre Shun-tin has founded in Manila. That aside, Drug Lords is never less than thrilling in its audacious action set pieces culminating in a jaw dropping car chase through a perfect replica of the Central MTR subway station.

The White Storm 2: Drug Lords is currently on limited release in UK cinemas courtesy of Cine Asia. It will also screen as the closing movie of the 2019 New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English / Traditional Chinese subtitles)

Integrity (廉政風雲 煙幕, Alan Mak, 2019)

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Integrity poster 1Alan Mak made his name with the phenomenally successful Infernal Affairs (co-directing with Andrew Lau) which later blossomed into a trilogy – a pattern he repeated with the Overheard series, making time for a few standalones in between. 2019’s Integrity (廉政風雲 煙幕), released as gritty alternative to the saccharine and silly fare usually on offer for Lunar New Year, finds him in similar territory and is once again touted as the first in a projected trilogy this time revolving around the ICAC who have become a Hong Kong movie favourite as of late. Drawing inspiration from classic ‘70s thrillers and American New Cinema, Integrity has a few questions to ask about the nature of corruption and the limits of control.

The drama begins with ICAC officer King (Sean Lau Ching-wan) briefing star witness Jack Hui (Nick Cheung Ka-fai) on their upcoming court case. Shortly after Jack has handed over a USB stick containing new evidence, he slips his protective detail and disappears leaving King’s case with a giant hole in the middle, especially considering one of the two defendants has also skipped town. Given a seven day recess, King reluctantly allows his wife, fellow ICAC officer Shirley (Karena Lam), to travel to Sydney to chase Jack while pressing his available leads in the form of defendant two and the rest of the USB stick.

Eschewing action in favour of intricately plotted conspiracy, Mak keeps the tension high as he slowly reveals the ambiguities of the case, reminding us that no one is quite as innocent as we might assume. We find out the relationship between Jack and King (pregnant names indeed) may not have been as straightforward as we first assumed while we’re also made aware of the extremely lucrative trade in black market cigarettes and the backhanders to the customs bureau that make it possible. Then again we have to ask ourselves why it is a top accountant like Jack might suddenly decide to turn whistleblower when he’s been perfectly content with his complicity in corruption for the last 20 years.

King is intent on catching “The Puppet Master” by following their financial trail, convinced that taking down the middlemen in the tobacco smuggling scam will eventually flush them out. He thinks he holds all the cards but isn’t quite aware what game it is he’s playing. Desperate to catch his quarry, King is in danger of crossing the line as he convinces defendant two to tell all by (falsely) promising her immunity as a prosecution witness. She eventually spills the beans, but warns him that people will die – something that tragically comes to pass when the Puppet Master starts taking care of loose ends.

Obsessed as he is, King isn’t quite sure he cares who might get hurt in his quest for justice. Then again, King’s need to catch the bad guy, as his boss (Alex Fong) tries to point out as kindly as possible, is a kind of displacement activity designed to get his mojo back so he can patch things up with his put-upon wife. Despite talk of divorce, the pair are still wearing their wedding rings and have romantic photos as their smartphone wallpaper while they continue to bicker (somewhat) affectionately via text message. The awkward romantic subplot is most likely intended to set up a series motif though it seems wholly out of place with Mak’s more serious themes, especially when tipping into unwelcome clichés such as Shirley’s impromptu shopping trips paid for with King’s card when she gets fed up with his persistent sexism.

The central theme of King’s own fracturing “integrity” gets lost in the shuffle but is dealt a killer blow by the extremely unwise ‘90s flashback and its eventual ‘80s counterpart which undercut almost everything that’s gone before, creating a series of inconvenient plot holes in the process. Mak isn’t quite sure where he wants to go and presents us with a series of trick endings, the final of which is a step too far even if it perhaps plays into his themes of karmic justice and the costs of betrayal (not to mention making it 100% clear for the mainland censors’ board that crime never pays). Though managing to nail the the tense ‘70s conspiracy thriller vibe in its early stretches Integrity’s ridiculous third act plot twists ruin an otherwise promising tale of greed and suspicion while perhaps reinforcing the idea that no one can be trusted and all connections are, to a point at least, mercenary.

Currently on limited release in UK cinemas.

Original trailer (English subtitles)