BEAST COPS
(Siren/Chinatown Video)
Reviewed by Jonathan
Marshall
When HK co-directors Dante Lam and Gordon Chan of
Beast Cops borrow techniques from US film-makers like Tarantino and
Robert Altman (Short Cuts, Nashville, etc) - the former
of whom pillaged Altman and HK film to develop his aesthetic -
separations between Western and Eastern cinema seem specious. Beast Cops is
certainly something of a surprise in HK film, for despite billing as a ‘gritty, cop
flick’, there is only one extended action sequence - albeit one involving as much
blood and maiming as Evil Dead! Moreover while HK cinema’s generic
inconsistency is notorious, Beast Cops’ combination of themes, moods and
feelings is unique.
Altman is the obvious comparison here, bridging as he
does violent action and complicated dramatic themes composed from the lives of multiple,
disparate actors. Although Beast Cops is not up to the inspired quality of Wong
Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express, it does share that film’s Altman-esque
sense that little connects these characters except chance encounters, common associates
and geographic proximity.
The early part of Beast Cops might lead one to expect
that it will deal with hard-nosed, disciplined rookie Mike (Michael Wong,
more than compensating for his woodenness in the US remake of Once a Thief)
learning from or reforming his compromised, lackadaisical comrade Chao (Anthony
Wong - who was wonderfully disgusting in Young and Dangerous II - here
looking like George Cluny gone to seed). Chan and Lam
are however comparatively uninterested in this theme - although it never entirely
drops from sight. This is more a story of human relationships; of Chao’s gently
melancholic affair with unhappy gold-digger Yam, Mike’s bittersweet seduction of the
madam Yoyo, and the cool but conflicting loyalties the men negotiate.
While the wandering narrative and a series of wonderful, funny, direct to
camera interview-like monologues from the characters’ fragments any cop/action
ambience generated, the Tarantino-esque features are only fully realised
in the finale. Rollicking, surfin’ guitar and sax kicks in as the protagonists engage
in an almost endless, Reservoir Dogs -style battle, punctuated by freeze-frames
and cool, blue-lit scowls. Beast Cops is a great, inventive variant on both
cop/action flicks and the engagingly unfocussed ensemble dramas of Altman,
Tarantino, Wong and Hal Hartley.
© 2000 Jonathan Marshall
H E R O I C * C I N E M A
http://www.heroic-cinema.com
