A tense one-night thrill ride as a close-knit police team attempts to stop a planned gangland hit over the course of a 36-hour period in the densely populated and claustrophobic streets of Hong Hong’s Mongkok. With riveting interplay between the characters, gritty and hard-hitting drama, and plenty of thrills and action. A stellar ensemble cast with Alex Fong as Inspector Milo leading the chase for mainland hitman Lai Fu (Daniel Wu), who is befriended by Mongkok hooker Dan Dan (Cecelia Cheung). An unflinching portrayal of both sides of Hong Kong’s crime underworld.

My Impressions

So I’m stuck in Sydney for work and low and behold the Sydney Film Festival is on… Could I be more disappointed? So I toodle off to see a film I have never heard of and find it to be gritty and hard edge experience. This film has alot in it and yet makes it fairly easy to follow. We have initial two gangs that tussel over a girl, this leads to a death and some serious politics problems. It all starts to esculate and a contract killer is brought in to square things up. The problem is that the agent for the killer has run out of men and so starts sourcing guys from his village on the mainland. This brings in our main character that we follow and see how royally screwed he gets by the end. The next big issue is that the police need to stop this gangland problem because itg is Christmas Eve and everyone is celebrating including the cheif of police. We see the team start investigating and then get so overwelmed and stressed with the additional killings that shit hits the fan. The next issue comes from Dan Dan the prositute that is helped and then helps the wouldbe assassin. The once of chance meeting becomes the down fall for all concerned. Then you need to consider that Manykok is the most crowed place on Earth and it just all ends in tears for all concerned. The film has so many characters that we lose some of the background people, but really who cares when their is some much to taking with the people in the limelight. Each main character gets a backgound and we see how it affects their actions. There is fun moments and some touching moments, but there is some really intense voilence too. When a film can make me shudder when a character gets his head repeatly smashed, it makes a mark on you (pun intended). This film isn’t without flaws thou. It has some very conveniant location devices to tie everything together. This isn’t a flaw as such but it isn’t as clear to give you the sense that… “opps, your here..” and believe it. The other problem is that it does lose some of the initial background and move off the track at times. The plot has a setup and the end never complete it, but moves towards the characters end goals. This make you wonder what exactly tied those loose ends up since it was the main reason for some of the characters to be there.

Summary

Truely a dense film of charcters. The filming is great, the pacing is good and the actors do a nice job of getting their characters across. It does have some sit up and shudder voilence, but really it wouldn’t have been as impacting without it. I recommend this film to anyone who like solid cop/gang dramas and asian cinema.