Eye in the Sky (2007) November 25, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Thriller, 2000s films , add a commentDirector: Yau Nai-Hoi Cast: Simon Yam, Tony Leung (Ka-Fai), Kate Tsui, Lam Suet Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Milkyway Image Ltd
Captain Wong (Simon Yam), head of a Hong Kong Police surveillance unit, takes on new recruit Ho (Kate Tsui). Their target is a gang of jewel thieves headed by Shan (Tony Leung Ka-Fai). Ho (nicknamed “Piggy” by Wong, much to her annoyance) learns the tricks of the trade perusing Shan through tailing “Fatboy” (Lam Suet), one of his thugs. Can they crack the gang before they strike again?
Eye in the Sky has some top-notch performances by the leads, including a paunchy Simon Yam as a fatherly mentor to the raw recruit Ho, but suffers from an under-developed script and some negligible direction. There are two distinct plot threads, following the cops and the robbers, and it often feels like the two elements don’t mesh together very well.
The surveillance tricks displayed by the team are quite good and will occasionally impress in their cleverness. The film asks some serious questions about privacy and today’s CCTV-obsessed world, and there’s one very sardonic scene when a fight between the criminal gang is broken up when one spots a woman undressing in a neighbouring apartment block. We even see, later in the movie, that the technology can cut both ways.
The supporting cast are as strong as the leads. Kate Tsui, who appears to debut here, is great and believable as the eager-to-please rookie, and we learn the Surveillance Unit’s techniques through her eyes. Also worth a mention are Maggie Shaw, who plays the tough-as-nails base controller and Lam Suet (yes, again! I swear the guy is in every movie to come out of Hong Kong these days!) as a dim-witted goon of Shan, and the Surveillance Unit’s only link with the gang.
None of the characters are given any kind of background or depth, and this creates a detached feeling that you couldn’t really care less about them most of the time. This is the film’s main drawback, and it’s hard to create real tension under these circumstances. Nevertheless, the strong performances (especially by Yam) and a few clever tricks and turns (not to mention the now-obligatory inclusion of impossible dilemmas for the protagonists) make this a still very watchable film. It’s just unlikely you’ll want to revisit it any time soon.
One other thing (and this has nothing to do with the actual movie as such) is that the dialogue is delivered in an unusually clear and manageable pace, making it great for people learning Cantonese. It seems to have less than the usual slang, slurrings and contractions, and there’s a lot of repeated dialogue to aid memory. Furthermore, the nature of the film means we get lots of descriptions of people and what they’re wearing – all essential elementary building blocks of a language.
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) November 19, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Drama, 2000s films , add a commentDirector: Park Chan-wook Cast: Ha-kyun Shin; Kang-ho Song; Du-na Bae; Ji-eun Lim Territory: South Korea Production Company: CJ Entertainment
Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin), a deaf-mute factory worker, has a sister in desperate need of a kidney transplant. Not having enough money for such an operation, he approaches underground organ traders. They rip him off (and steal a kidney in the process) and he has to come up with another plan. His girlfriend (Du-na Bae) comes up with the idea of kidnapping the young daughter of Ryu’s wealthy ex-boss Park (Kang-ho Song). When this also goes wrong, resulting in tragedy, Park goes after Ryu.
The first film in director Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy is sometimes overshadowed by its successor, Oldboy, and it’s easy to see why. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is pretty tough viewing: it’s bloody and brutal, has very little dialogue and is occasionally pretty hard to follow (not helped by the DVD’s shortcomings – more on that later).
It’s magnificently filmed and often looks breathtaking in the shot composition. It also has a top-notch cast who perform brilliantly. Particular mention should go to the little girl who plays Boss Park’s daughter, who has to do some quite emotionally complex things during the film.
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is never straightforward, but the obvious question is with whom do you sympathise? Ryu is an honest guy looking after his sister, faced with a series of impossible situations when things go from bad to worse to impossible. Yet Park, Ryu’s ex-boss, starts as a completely insensitive character, who, through tragedy, becomes believably sympathetic. This point is not lost on Park, who even says that he knows Ryu is a decent man.
Like Oldboy, there are certain scenes that stand out as utterly shocking in their use of the blackest of black comedy. The obvious example is the one where a group of teenage boys are jammed up against the apartment wall adjoining Ryu’s flat, furiously masturbating. They are masturbating to the sounds of Ryu’s sister, thinking she is in the throes of orgasm. In actual fact, she is screaming in pain from her sickness, and Ryu, being deaf, is oblivious to the fact. That’s a scene that will probably stay in my memory for a long time to come.
The version I watched is from Tartan, and it is usually pretty good. I have read that several versions have at least one scene played out of place - the sex scene between Ryu and his girlfriend appears much earlier in some versions (presumably to get some rumpy-pumpy on screen as early as possible to stop the casual viewer getting bored). However, it does screw up in a quite major way: text is not subtitled. Sometimes this is not necessary, but unfortunately in this particular film it is pretty crucial to at least one plot point. Thanks to the Internet, some kind soul has translated the bits shown on screen for all to see and the meaning is now clear. I must admit I think I would have appreciated the film a lot better with this information at the time rather than after the fact. Readers who have seen the film probably know what I’m alluding to here.
After watching such downbeat films like Dog Bite Dog recently, I found Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance pretty harrowing and hard to take. It is undoubtedly clever, intelligent and thought-provoking, but the constant dark tone got to me. I will return to it one day and appreciate it more, I’m sure, but now I really need a light, fluffy comedy, I think…
Dog Bite Dog (2006) November 11, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Thriller, 2000s films , 1 comment so farDirector: Soi Cheang Cast: Edison Chen, Sam Lee, Pei Pei Wei-Ying, Wayne Lai, Lam Suet Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Art Port Inc; Same Way Productions
The husband of a barrister pays to have a Cambodian hitman (Edison Chen) kill his wife. The killer’s getaway is thwarted by the police headed by Wai (Sam Lee) and is cornered, taking more lives before making a spectacular escape. Wai then comes after the killer with everything he’s got, even going well outside of the law to get revenge rather than justice.
Dog Bite Dog is an exceptionally squalid, gritty, dirty and distressing film. The excessive (but realistic) gore just keeps on coming and coming. No wonder this received a Cat III rating – I would seriously advise against eating while watching this film. It is also one of the bleakest, starkest and most nihilistic films I’ve seen in a long time. It doesn’t quite make The Deer Hunter look like a Three Stooges film, but it’s still pretty grim.
The cast are brilliant - including Edison Chen, believe it or not. He plays a young man raised in brutal fight camps in Cambodia who then progresses to assassination, and is man with nothing to lose. The main reason for Chen’s success here I suspect is the fact that he barely speaks, and when he does, it is in Cambodian. Against him is Sam Lee as Wai, a cop with his own problems – his father is currently in a coma and who will face accusations of drug dealing if he should wake. I only know Lee from comedic roles (including the horror comedy Bio Zombie) and I was initially sceptical of his ability to play it straight. However, he pulls it off, giving a great and natural performance. The cast is rounded out with the always watchable Wayne Lai (also from Bio Zombie, now that I think about it!), and Johnny To regulars Eddie Cheung and Lam Suet (who seems to be in just about everything I watch these days!). The only real female presence come from newcomer Pei Pei Wei-Ying, who is an abused young woman who forms an attachment with the hitman when he kills her bullying father.
The hatred of Wai for the hitman is handled in a believable manner and it is quite exciting when the two men meet for the first hour and a half of the film. One thing that did seem a little unnecessary was the inclusion of dog snarls and animal noises when the two start knocking each other about – yes, they’re like animals, I get it, stop hitting me over the head with the metaphor!
Without going into too much detail for those who are yet to see it, the film seems to wrap up in a satisfactory (if inevitably grim) way after about an hour and a half. Instead though, we get another fifteen minutes tacked on which I could have done without and do the film no favours whatsoever. The whole tone changes after this, and becomes a little predictable in my view. Also, do we really need another montage scene with a pop song playing over it? In 2006? In a film as dark as this? I do believe the director shot himself in the foot quite badly with this ill-considered coda. And when you thought the violence and gore had stopped once and for all, it’s time to get the sick bags out one final time for the climax.
There’s a reasonably good film in here, for sure, but it’s too uneven and the relentlessly dark tone makes it a bit of a hard slog to get through and I can’t honestly see myself ever wanting to sit through all that again. If you do watch Dog Bite Dog, don’t expect many chuckles – and it might be an idea to lay off the popcorn unless you want to see it again later.
Lam Suet-o-meter: Low. But here’s here and even has the name “Fat Lam”. I wonder how long it took to come up with that name?
Election (2005) November 5, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Drama, Thriller, 2000s films , 7 commentsDirector: Johnnie To Cast: Simon Yam, Tony Leung (Ka-Fai), Wong Chung, Louis Koo, Lam Suet Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Milkyway Image
My Johnnie To season continues with Election, a nasty look into the world of the Triad. The Wo Sing Triad is one of the biggest crime organisations in Hong Kong with an estimated membership of 50,000. Every two years, the leader is elected by a council of elders (or “uncles”), and this year’s contenders are Lok (Simon Yam) and Big D (Tony Leung Ka-Fai). When Big D loses the contest fair and square, he doesn’t take it well and threatens to steal the power from under his rival, something Lok will not allow. The chase is on for the century-old baton which will bestow official leadership to the head of the Wo Sing group, and possibly start a horrific civil war in the process.
Election’s tale of warring Triads, corruption, tradition, political allegories and spoon-eating psychopaths (yes, you read that right) was nominated for a whole bunch of Golden Horse awards in 2006 and even won a few (including Best Picture and Best Director). It is a very well presented film with a great acoustic guitar theme, and Johnny To again shows he’s great at shooting exteriors. The characters are mostly great and believable, but I was quite surprised when I heard that the Tony Leung that was in this film was Leung Ka-Fai and not Leung Chiu-Wai. Maybe To made a mistake and hired the wrong one and couldn’t back out, but this particular Leung overcooks it a bit in my opinion in this one. Yam is excellent as the more restrained Lok, a gangster who also has to contend with family life with his son and I particularly liked Wong Tin-Lam as Teng Wai, a very human “uncle”. Old Shaw Brothers superstar David Chiang also gets a role as an anti-Triad police officer, which surprised me – I thought he’d retired to Canada years ago!
The film does play well as a serious look at organised crime and the consequences of being in such an organisation, but it also has flashes of comedy (such as when the representatives of Lok and Big D resort to sabotaging each other’s cars) which is sometimes very dark. There are also moments of suspense and action when the ceremonial baton is unearthed and transported from the Mainland to Hong Kong. Whoever owns the baton is seen to be in control of the Society, and this means that those who want it will stop at nothing to obtain it.
Election is not an action film or a “Heroic Bloodshed” film; it is more of a crime drama, and one scene reminded me strongly of a scene from Krzysztof Keislowski’s A Short Film About Killing. It’s not all doom and gloom, but it’s not light and fluffy either. It’s also a little confusing in places, which I’m coming to understand is par for the course with a Johnnie To film. I’m thinking another viewing will probably yield more appreciation. I’m not sure if this film is meant to be a satire on the corruptive nature of democracy, but I’m pretty sure one of the lessons taught by the film is that patience is a virtue. Either that or don’t accept invitations to go fishing with someone you once screwed over.
Lam Suet-o-meter: Medium. Mr Lam is the aptly named “Big Head”. Quite a lot of exposure for this part…