27th Hong Kong International
Film Festival 2003
by Alison Jobling
Episode 1 - Good Cops, Bad Cops
Once again, I'm going to break my festival report into sections,
because I saw 26-odd films (and some were very odd indeed), and I'd
dissolve into a wee melty thing if I tried to talk about all of them in
one go. Consider it a cunning ploy to keep your attention on me, some sort
of Scheherezade's Game, if you wish.
So this week is all about cops, and I'll start by bravely decrying my
title: in Hong Kong it seems there are no good cops or bad cops, merely
cops. The idealistic, moralistic, simplistic cop-as-poster-child is no
more. The cop who's bad to the bone has gone the same way. These days,
cops are all just people, with complex motivations and behaviours. Pretty
much as it is in real life, in fact, and that's a laudable change: the
heroic policeman with the shiny boots, crisp salute, and spanking short
haircut of the 80's was never really credible, and the evil cop laughing
the give-away villain's laugh (don't know why they never twigged to that.
Was perfectly obvious to moi) was even more ludicrous.
 |
PTU: Into The Perilous Night,
started the whole confuse-a-cop vibe at this year's festival: it was
one of the opening night screenings, and the first screening of this
latest and long-awaited work from Johnnie To Kei Fung.
Now you all know that I admire To's work, as do many others, and
since PTU has been underway for about 2 years, we've all been
psyching ourselves up for this for ages, a fact that undoubtedly
unnerved To. |
To's cops are complex characters, ordinary people given a dangerous job
and a degree of power which can drive them in unexpected directions. Since
I've written a full review of PTU,
lauding its virtues in detail, I shan't repeat myself here, save to say
that To's cops are just the sort I'd like patrolling the streets on nights
when I'm safe at home. Probably safe, but it's best to be careful all the
same.
Andrew Lau's cops in Infernal
Affairs, on t'other hand, are the ultimate in line-blurring. Are
they triad gangsters? Are they cops? What separates them, when it comes
down to it?
| Lau does a fairly jaw-clenching job of conveying just how
difficult it really is being an undercover, of whatever stamp, and
the sort of stresses that would reduce a weaker character (eg me) to
the mental level of broccoli puree.Whether cops or triads, Lau's
characters deal with issues of secret long-term loyalty, and the
routine everyday betrayal, that goes with being undercover. If any
one of the characters were two-dimensional, if there were even a
hint of good-guys-versus-bad-guys about this, the whole film would
suffer, but Lau manages to present an ensemble of credible
characters all fighting their own battles. |
|
The same cannot be said of Jeff Lau's old classic, Haunted Cop Shop
II. For starters, I have no idea whether there was ever a Haunted
Cop Shop I. Characters sketched in broad strokes display all manner of
inadequacies, presenting a vision of not so much Hong Kong's Finest as
Hong Kong's Most Embarrassing. It should give you an idea of the tenor of
the film if I mention that Ricky Hui features prominently. He even gets
some nookie in the opening scenes, albeit with a vampire: more believable,
perhaps, since I imagine that only the undead could find Hui attractive.
Given the random assemblage of
certainly-not-good-but-too-inept-to-be-bad cops, we'd expect some hijinks,
and Lau certainly doesn't disappoint: the team are beset by just about
every variety of ghoulie, ghostie, and long-legged beastie in the
Asia-Pacific region. Oddly enough, they don't all perish immediately,
although I'm still unsure why not. Lau has some strange ideas about
time-travel, so perhaps he's constantly renewing his cast from parallel
universes.
This bizarre comedy/cops/ghost movie succeeds, however, despite the
one-dimensional characters and The Appalling Ricky Hui, and this is
probably due to Lau's peculiar talents. My favourite scene featured a
young and exceedingly cute Jacky Cheung, attempting to rescue a female
colleague from rampaging zombies by ripping open his shirt, pointing to
his exposed chest, and shouting "Look! Tasty! Eat this! Eat this, not
her!" Ohhh, Jacky.
 |
The final entrant in the Cop of the Week contest is a new Herman
Yau film called Shark Busters. The title refers to loan
sharks, who are portrayed as the scourge of most of Hong Kong,
including the police. A police team, headed by the inimitable Danny
Lee, reprising his "good cop with personal worries"
character from so many movies, decides to crack down on a particular
loan shark using any means possible. Said loan shark, grateful to
the crumbling economy for providing money for his
"industry", sets up a finance company which uses a
combination of modern shonky business methods and tried and true
triad intimidation. |
One aspect that lifts this film into the ranks of the extraordinary is
the loan shark. Lam Suet, adorned by a plethora of jewelry and with his
shaven head shaved gleaming, jumps all over his role with an almost
operatic fervour. He gloats like a champion gloater, orders his minions
around with vigour, and just generally breathes new life into what could
have been a rather tired character type. All he needs to become the fifth
heavenly king is to launch a singing career, and why not, since this film
may have provided him with the costumes.
The pernicious debt angle also works well, and saves it from being
perhaps just another cops-get-triads semi-revenge flick. All the cops,
including the upright Danny Lee, are up to the bottom lip in debt, whether
to legitimate finance companies or triads. And although this film has a
strong focus on wish-fulfillment, it somehow escapes the saccharine
fantasy that we're wont to get from lesser film-makers: the sort of Disney
"magic wand" effect, where all the worries miraculously
disappear. Yau's cops, and all the other debtors, aren't carried into a
nicer world at the end of the film, however triumphant they may be. Yes,
their debts disappear, and that's a huge relief, but they're still stuck
paying off property at pre-meltdown rates with post-meltdown incomes.
Now that we've dealt with the law, we'll have some fun next week with a
bunch of girly pictures. Not porn, I hasten to add: no, these girly
pictures are so named because the main character is female. (I've left Tamala
out of this because, although she's female, that film is so unrelentingly
and deeply weird that it deserves prime position in Episode 4...)
