Thrills and Chills

The Hong Kong film industry right now appears to churn out movies of only three or so genres: Cutesy vomit-inducing romantic comedies, police/gangster thrillers by Johnnie To wannabes, and action flicks with lots of ass-kicking. Or at least, you'd think it by the selections that Singapore distributors bring in. Because I tend to avoid the first category, and so didn't see the latest Eason Chan vehicle, this post will be about the latter two instead.

跟蹤 (Eye in the Sky) is written and directed by frequent Johnnie To collaborator Yau Nai Hoi, and he makes an assured directorial debut in this slick procedural thriller. Working with a seasoned To-ensemble, he can't really go wrong, except when he expects a little too much from the newbie playing the lead role. The Surveillance Unit of the Hong Kong Police Force is the focus here, and the obsessive details of how they go about doing their job isn't boring at all, it's bloody captivating, and that's a big credit towards Yau's skills as a storyteller. Yes, we feel the dreariness of the wait, but we also feel the intensity as they locate their target and the thrill of the hunt. Great handheld cinematography, careful choreography and skillful editing make everything flow together seamlessly, and the tension holds up for the majority of the film.

I appreciate how Yau doesn't treat the audience as fucking morons; he doesn't spell out everything in capital letters, but instead trusts them to infer conclusions based on what's presented. We see everyone using their Octopus cards (the Hong Kong public transport stored value card) to pay their busfares, then crime lord Tony Leung steps up and pays with coins, and we get it right away - he doesn't want to be traced, for you can't track journeys paid in cash, a conclusion which is validated by a later sequence where one of his henchmen is tracked down via his Octopus card transactions.

The movie's so good for most of it, you can even forgive the contrivances that occur near the end of the film, including a poorly-played emotional moment for the lead actress. There's also a seemingly tacked-on happy ending which goes against all medical logic that I had trouble with, but I suppose with what's gone before it, I can't really complain all that much.

男兒本色 (Invisible Target), on the other hand, is pretty much empty when it comes to the brains department, thanks to incompetent director Benny Chan. Thankfully, there are plenty of cool fight scenes liberally scattered throughout the movie, but in between them there are way too many plot/character scenes which are horribly executed in every department. Seriously, when you have lots of ass-kicking, you shouldn't even bother with plot; it's irrelevant. We don't give a shit about these characters being real human beings; from their fighting we know they're superhuman, and we just really wanna see them slug it out, that's all. We don't want to see Nicholas Tse emoting, or Jackie Chan Junior trying to cry for the umpteenth time (God, is he fucking annoying or what) - it's just painful. Neither do we want to see bad guys humanized. Give us more of Chinese martial artist Wu Jing kicking ass (he's always great in action) and more of stars like Tse giving their all in the action sequences.

There's a beautiful sequence where Tse is pursuing Wu who's chasing some punk across rooftops, and they make a leap for an adjoining rooftop one by one. The punk lands and twists his leg or something. Wu lands gracefully and glances back to see Tse jumping right at him, so he immediately launches backwards into a flying kick and fucking kicks Tse away before he reaches the roof, sending him into a tree, then crashing down on a container truck before painfully hitting the ground. And that's former pretty-boy star Tse doing his own stunts, falling off the roof and hitting the ground. It's a spectacular sequence, and you have to give props to Tse for his effort, but damn the melodramatic crap in between to all hell. So this is half a great action movie, and half a spine-chillingly horrendous melodrama, and eventually they just cancel each other out to make this a pretty "meh" experience.