I saw this film originally on the Tai Seng VHS tape and believed I was seeing the original. The recent MEI AH re-release video reveals an additional 4 minutes Tai Seng trimmed, and they are pretty strong; it's amazing what a couple of minutes will do for a film.
This is as nasty a crime film as you will ever see. Ringo Lam goes straight for the throat of a contemporary Asia crumbling into a gaudy, violent nihilism. The moral center is held to be a thin hope that maybe the right thing can be done for an innocent girl wounded unnecessarily during a gang fight. Everything else is blood, perversion, and flashy neon.
Sounds like a good reason not to see the film? Not so. This is one of the least exploitative exploitation flicks around - the film doesn't suggest that anyone in it is having fun, even the psychos laughing as buildings blow up, with people in them. In a world where everything is meaningless and anything goes, finding meaning becomes the only reason to live and the only real accomplishment.
Cinematically, this is Ringo Lam in top form, developing a style that is often as flashy and hollow as the culture it portrays, but through which moments of intense realism burst forth, reminding us of the real pain such violence entails. Many films (East and West) have since imitated this style, but without Ringo Lam's sense of moral critique, it can easily become just so much flash and glitter, of the kind Lam is actually criticizing here.
Finally, one must remark the excellent performances by all the actors involved.
A very disturbing, but very excellent - and in an important sense, a very necessary - film.
This is as nasty a crime film as you will ever see. Ringo Lam goes straight for the throat of a contemporary Asia crumbling into a gaudy, violent nihilism. The moral center is held to be a thin hope that maybe the right thing can be done for an innocent girl wounded unnecessarily during a gang fight. Everything else is blood, perversion, and flashy neon.
Sounds like a good reason not to see the film? Not so. This is one of the least exploitative exploitation flicks around - the film doesn't suggest that anyone in it is having fun, even the psychos laughing as buildings blow up, with people in them. In a world where everything is meaningless and anything goes, finding meaning becomes the only reason to live and the only real accomplishment.
Cinematically, this is Ringo Lam in top form, developing a style that is often as flashy and hollow as the culture it portrays, but through which moments of intense realism burst forth, reminding us of the real pain such violence entails. Many films (East and West) have since imitated this style, but without Ringo Lam's sense of moral critique, it can easily become just so much flash and glitter, of the kind Lam is actually criticizing here.
Finally, one must remark the excellent performances by all the actors involved.
A very disturbing, but very excellent - and in an important sense, a very necessary - film.