Hong Kong Cinema

[Mr Sausage]

Jade Leung


Fox Hunter (Wei Tung, 1995)

Jade Leung, a former beauty pageant winner turned HK action star, plays an eagre police woman whose first undercover assignment goes badly. The perp escapes, rapes her and murders her beloved uncle, then leaves her for dead. She and an annoying informer head out for revenge. This Letterboxd reviewer says it best: “Stop me if you've heard this one before -- a Hong Kong film with a dynamite opening that becomes a tedious, unfunny bore for a while... before redeeming itself with an insane action overload of a climax.” The action is indeed wonderful, with scenes following the logic of comedy with how they offer a series of complications followed by ingenious solutions, but at a rapid-fire pace and in deadly earnest. Yet the rhythm is unmistakable. And there are some cuts and scene transitions full of style and invention, like a shot of Leung shooting at a closed door: when she stops, the camera tracks up to the mirror above her for us to see a reflection of the door being kicked open, triggering a cut from the reflected image to a direct shot of the door opening to show a man behind it backlit by blue light. It’s artistic, actually, and something that in a Hollywood film would be lingered on and called attention to, while in typical HK fashion it goes by in a blip amidst other kinetic moments.

Satin Steel (Leung Siu-Hung, 1994)

A gender swapped Lethal Weapon knock off. Jade Leung is the Riggs stand in, a reckless, tormented cop with a past; Anita Lee is the Murtaugh character, a straight-laced cop with a family. While not an outright parody, the movie does seem to be having fun with its source material, often replaying scenes from Lethal Weapon with a silly or undercutting tone, and playing things up til they're ridiculous. Eg., when Jade Leung redoes the ‘Riggs nearly shoots himself in front of Murtaugh to prove he’s crazy” schtick, it allows a bad guy to free himself and run away because the leads are so engrossed in their bullshit. The traumatic flashback to Jade’s new husband being killed involves him being blown full of holes trying to protect her, twice, and then the two of them being blasted out a hotel window where they fall several stories into a pool (the now utterly perforated husband still makes sure to turn in mid air so that he lands beneath her). The villain has a henchman with a robotic arm that he uses to tear people’s ears off. There are some oddly Bond-esque touches, like a brief Q character, the aforementioned Bond henchman, and a globetrotting plot. Unlike Fox Hunter, the action is poor, hamstringed by the two lead actresses being unable to fight. A lame, silly movie, neither funny nor exciting, but with a strain of weirdness that keeps it from being completely tedious. This ought to’ve been a Lee/Oshima vehicle.

Black Cat (Stephen Shin, 1991)

The movie that shot Jade Leung to HK stardom and landed her a few awards. Intended as a remake of La Femme Nikita, the filmmakers couldn’t secure the rights, so they just ripped it off instead. There’s a certain off-kilter disturbance to the movie, especially in the opening: it’s often done in the style of a western movie, and then the action starts and you get the swiftness, slightly overtuned editing, and greater rhythmic sense of HK filmaking. It’s an odd feeling, like two sensibilities colliding. There’s also the usual HK indifference to non-Chinese actors. They read their lines in a monotone like they’re reciting them off a piece of paper someone just handed them, sometimes unintelligibly or with outright flubs and self corrections. Tho’ we're meant to be in America, a lot of the actors have Australian accents; and one mission set in New York is plainly happening in the wilds of BC. It’s such a strange experience; so much is just off. For a D&B production, there isn’t a lot of action, and when it does arise it’s fairly simple, again more like an American film. The film also seems thirty minutes too short, like its missing the last act. For all that, it's a pacy, consistently entertaining movie. In no way exceptional or noteworthy, but an ok time.

[mrb404]

Cargo Records in Germany is releasing The Valiant Ones in August. Doesn't look like there are details yet about subtitles or anything. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the subtitles.

Spectrum Films in France will be releasing The Valiant Ones next year on UHD (2024). Not sure this would include anything but French subtitles.

Their second King Hu boxset is coming out in a month and will include Come Drink with Me on UHD, as well as Sons of Good Earth, Four Moods, The Wheel of Life and The Painted Skin. Apparently, only French subtitles for this release too.

[yoloswegmaster]

Cargo Records in Germany is releasing The Valiant Ones in August. Doesn't look like there are details yet about subtitles or anything. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the subtitles.

I think it's best to ignore this release, as they heavily cropped the image so that they could hide the burned-in subs (and it looks waxy in comparison):

SpoilerShow

[feihong]

Cargo Records in Germany is releasing The Valiant Ones in August. Doesn't look like there are details yet about subtitles or anything. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the subtitles.

I think it's best to ignore this release, as they heavily cropped the image so that they could hide the burned-in subs (and it looks waxy in comparison):

SpoilerShow

That's flabbergasting. I can't believe people still do garbage weirdness like this on home video.

[Mr Sausage]

Johnnie To

It's taken me a while to follow up on my pleasurable experience with Running Out of Time, but I'm all in now.


Mad Detective (Johnnie To, 2007)

To’s films are games with genre. Not satires or subversions or self-aware commentary. He takes the familiar conventions and cliches and plays with them to produce fun, knowing, offbeat assemblages that depend on the viewer’s familiarity with the genre at hand. Take this one, a bizarre, original take on a familiar concept: the offbeat detective whose brilliant deductions tread the line between genius and madness. Except in To’s hands, he’s literally insane, and his insanity solves cases as well as hinders them, eventually damning the detective along with others. Well, there is one ambiguity: whether the detective is hallucinating or seeing spirits. But there’s no ambiguity about how fucked up he is. This all ends with To redeeming one of my least favourite cop cliches, the hero who gets talked down from executing an evil person with a ‘you’ll be no different from them!’ speech, which comes at the end of a brilliantly shot stand off (the mirror shards!) and close quarters gun fight, and plays out with perfect logic according to the rules of the film. A genuinely surprising romp full of great conceits. I see how To has become an art house favourite while making ostensibly low brow entertainment. You just don’t see these types of movies presented this way.

PTU (Johnnie To, 2003)

Again, the parts are all familiar if you’ve seen a single cops-and-gangsters movie. The fun is watching To assemble all the pieces into this perfect dovetailing of various zipping plot lines to produce a crescendo of violence that dispels the plot energy while resolving every strand the movie’d held in play. The film is by turns comic, brutal, suspenseful, and surreal, moving amidst these tones with an assurance that never falters. Ultimately, the pleasure lies in appreciating the confident orchestration as much as enjoying the plot/characters. Everything’s so wonderfully put together. Take the early restaurant scene, which is like the movie in miniature: a set of dimly related characters endlessly pushing each other between various tables, all awaiting and answering different phone calls about each other, with it all culminating in the perceived hierarchy being upended in a surprise manoeuvre. What I liked, too, is that no one in this story is heroic; everyone, from the gangsters to the police, are petty, violent thugs. The titular Police Tactical Unit spends the whole movie assaulting and torturing people for no other reason than to help some corrupt blow-hard cop retrieve his lost gun and save his promotion. It’s so petty. In any other movie they’d be on the warpath because something especially heinous and rule-defying had happened, something that would justify for the audience the extreme extra-judicial behaviour. Not here. They eventually do the right thing after an obligatory righteous speech by a young subordinate, but that choice doesn’t restore justice, it just continues to help the corrupt! Cops, criminals, whatever, this is a bunch of violent and morally bankrupt groups all circling each other as the net pulls tighter. Wonderful.

Exiled (Johnny To, 2006)

A masterpiece. I was genuinely moved by this movie. Again, I recognized everything from other gangster movies, but the way the parts were put together was always a surprise. For example, where else would you see a Mexican stand off full of swagger and cool smash cut to the combatants helping move furniture into the apartment of a guy they were just trying to kill? The following meal, full of humour, camaraderie, and tension is an unusual and off kilter experience. You feel the conflict of divided loyalties and looming decisions. This ambivalence will grow into a theme: the inability of the characters to choose their fate, the way they rely on chance to force their hand. They are in limbo, even until the end. A lot of people online are calling this film incoherent, but I didn’t find it hard to follow. I think the trouble is that the film doesn’t make many of its plot points and motivations explicit, but suggests them through atmosphere and emotional resonance for an engaged audience to intuit. I felt why things were happening, and that allowed the movie to conjure quite a spell, a mixture of fun and sadness that drew me in. Helping in no small measure is one of Anthony Wong’s most accomplished roles, a subtle, conflicted, layered performance that seemed to communicate so much weight from the smallest shift of expression. The burden of indecision rests mostly on his shoulders—the legacy of that first inability to choose that sets off the narrative—and we experience the frustration and sadness that slowly cramps him and the narrative entirely through the look in his eyes and the set of his mouth. How does Johnnie To make something so beautiful out of a set of gangster cliches?

[Michael Kerpan]

Mr S -- So glad you finally got to see these three Johnnie To films -- and loved them as much as I do. I feel that, at his best, JT is great in a way very similar to Takeshi Kitano at HIS best. The mix of fun and sadness, the playing with genres and cliches and expectations, the excellent sense of pacing (comic and dramatic).

[yoloswegmaster]

Glad to see another person join the Johnnie To fan club! I would recommend Fat Choi Spirit as the next To film to watch, as I genuinely don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I've seen it be described as being "Looney Tunes meets California Split," and I honestly don't think there's a better description then that.

Speaking of To, does anyone know if he was the one who actually directed The Odd One Dies, Expect the Unexpected, and The Longest Nite? I know that he was the producer on these but I have seen it be suggested that he was actually the director. However, I can't find anything to back that claim.

[Michael Kerpan]

My favorite "oddball" Johnnie To film is Wu Yen. Among its greatest gloroius was Anita Mui playing a greedy and selfish emperor who at one point has to "disguise" himself as a woman to escape rebels. A fantastic cast seeming to have lots of fun in what was just supposed to be a holiday-time poitboiler. But I feel it transcends that.

yoloswegmaster -- I suspect the status of those films will NEVER really be clarified....

[feihong]

Glad to see another person join the Johnnie To fan club! I would recommend Fat Choi Spirit as the next To film to watch, as I genuinely don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I've seen it be described as being "Looney Tunes meets California Split," and I honestly don't think there's a better description then that.

Speaking of To, does anyone know if he was the one who actually directed The Odd One Dies, Expect the Unexpected, and The Longest Nite? I know that he was the producer on these but I have seen it be suggested that he was actually the director. However, I can't find anything to back that claim.

If I remember correctly, in the interviews with To in Stephen Teo's book, "Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film," To says it was a mistake to call Patrick Yau the director, and that the work Yau did was more like a location manager. He implies pretty heavily that he directed the films himself. In retrospect, I think it's entirely obvious. To's style is all over the films, his use of the camera, his particular film interests...when other Milkyway filmmakers direct it's usually very obvious how different To's visual language is. Super-tired, but I will try and dig this section of the interview up.

[Michael Kerpan]

It is so frustrating that these maybe-To-directed films have never gotten decent home video releases.

[feihong]

To me The Mission is the saddest single omission, but I tend to agree in general. I think The Mission is the film which really paves the way for the later, richer movies––along with being the film which Exiled is a really direct sequel for.

[feihong]

Turns out in the Teo book, To's answer is much more thorny and complicated. Here it is. Teo begins by saying, "We now know that in fact it was you who directed the films that Patrick Yau was credited for." And To replies:

"There are various ways of dividing the work. Wai Ka-fai, for example, came out of scriptwriting. He is a very skilled screenwriter, but in terms of production, he wasn't mature enough as a director. The director must know what he wants. He must know the content of the shot even if he can't tell you where to put the camera. In this sense, he wasn't mature, at the time. Now, of course, he has become a mature director. With someone like Wai Ka-fai, I would give my opinions, or if I like his screenplays, I would help him find a producer. I don't interfere too much. With other directors, I would give them a subject and let them develop it. I insist that they incorporate my views and ideas. Another kind of cooperation is when I have set up the whole project, done the casting and the director just carries out the execution. This is the kind of director that Patrick Yau is. I feel that my cooperation with Patrick Leung and with Patrick Yau were not too successful because I would give them too much of my own opinions which they could not accept––but I had to be mindful of the investors and so I insisted they did it my way. Patrick Yau has since departed, and that's only fair if his desire is to make his own films. Yau directed The Longest Nite and Expect the Unexpected. On The Longest Nite, I had taken him on as an experiment but he couldn't fulfill my wishes. Half-way through, I took over."

Teo asks why Yau was still credited as the director.

Johnnie To:

"Well, I had wanted him to succeed and be recognized as a director. I didn't want to pull him down half-way through the film, so I helped him finish it. I went onto the set and told him what to do, and he then went on to tell others what to do. After that experience, I felt that it was a good practice for him and I let him work on Expect the Unexpected. But then the same thing happened, and I had to take over the direction. After these two films, I said to him, why don't you see what you can do outside of the company? He was feeling fed-up himself. Both he and Patrick Leung were my former assistant directors, and perhaps they both felt that I was supervising them. Therefore, if they left the company, it might be better for them. That's how I feel. If there were opportunities to work together again, we would, but there haven't been. "

To goes on almost immediately to make the same exact claim about Moment of Romance, that Benny Chan directed half of it, and that he, To, finished it off. I remember reading another interview where To called Patrick Yau a location manager rather than the director of the films, but I guess it wasn't in the Teo book. It looks like Wikipedia claims Patrick Yau directed The Odd One Dies on his own, and I don't think the Teo interview addresses Yau's contribution. It's all pretty funny, too, in retrospect, because To makes a complaint of Tsui Hark being a similar kind of invasive producer on The Big Heat. Turns out To wasn't above visiting the same indignities on others as he resented on The Big Heat.

[feihong]

...aaaannnd here's the bit from the Teo book on To directing The Odd One Dies.

Stephen Teo: I'd like you to confirm first that you directed this film.

Johnnie To: Yes. Patrick Yau is the nominal director.

So it looks all to be confirmed from To's own point of view, at least.

[feihong]

Johnnie To

Mad Detective (Johnnie To, 2007)

To’s films are games with genre. Not satires or subversions or self-aware commentary. He takes the familiar conventions and cliches and plays with them to produce fun, knowing, offbeat assemblages that depend on the viewer’s familiarity with the genre at hand. Take this one, a bizarre, original take on a familiar concept: the offbeat detective whose brilliant deductions tread the line between genius and madness. Except in To’s hands, he’s literally insane, and his insanity solves cases as well as hinders them, eventually damning the detective along with others. Well, there is one ambiguity: whether the detective is hallucinating or seeing spirits. But there’s no ambiguity about how fucked up he is. This all ends with To redeeming one of my least favourite cop cliches, the hero who gets talked down from executing an evil person with a ‘you’ll be no different from them!’ speech, which comes at the end of a brilliantly shot stand off (the mirror shards!) and close quarters gun fight, and plays out with perfect logic according to the rules of the film. A genuinely surprising romp full of great conceits. I see how To has become an art house favourite while making ostensibly low brow entertainment. You just don’t see these types of movies presented this way.

One of the first Hong Kong blu rays for sale was the Hong Kong theatrical cut of Mad Detective Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai made. Subsequently, they created an international cut of the movie for festivals and foreign sales––which is very distinct from the Hong Kong theatrical cut, first and foremost because the whole film is tinted blue. That international cut is the one that appears on blu ray and streaming pretty much everywhere else. The cuts seem to run almost the same length on the MOC disc with the international cut and the Mei Ah disc with the Hong Kong cut, but a shot and a couple of short sequences are taken out in the international cut. And the excision of those segments turns Mad Detective from what I think is a vividly magical-realist film and narrow it into a more conventional––albeit twisted––cop thriller. The missing scenes also create a very weird, very awkward sequencing issue in the film where none really existed before.

The sections of the film that get cut in the international version all center around the sequence where Bun buries himself in the field where Chi Wai's partner is possibly buried. Bun pulls the dirt over himself, and then the film shows us a patently unreal shot, a side-view of Bun lying in the ground, covered in earth, dreaming all the answers to his problems. The title of the film in Chinese includes a Chinese euphemism for madness that means, essentially, "touched by god"––which is how the film tends to portray Bun's abilities, as god-given inspiration. In this side view into the earth, Bun seems like he's on a vision quest, receiving "god's touch" by placing himself adjacent to death. That could be read in the previous shots of the burial scene, but this distinct shot drives it home in such a poetic way it was a terrible piece of the film to lose.

Next omission is during Bun's hallucination in the grave. In both versions we see Bun envision how Chi-Wai kills the partner, how he switches the serial numbers on the guns in the computer, and how he plants evidence to frame the Indian man for the murder and the theft. In the international cut, when Bun sees Chi-Wai plant the evidence, he bursts out of the grave, awake. But in the Hong Kong version, Bun sees a visionary, symbolic sequence first, in nightmarish slow-motion. He sees all of Chi-Wai's different personalities converging on a frightened young child, chasing him down a roadway in the dead of night. The personalities grab the boy, throw him to the ground, reach into his pocket, and draw from the boy's sweater a police revolver. The violent personality is going to take the pistol for himself, but the lead personality, the calculating one, takes the gun from him and shoots the boy in a long shot, slow-motion composition. That point, only featured in the Hong Kong cut, is when Bun then bursts from the grave, panicky––moved by the nightmare ending to the dream, not just by...I guess the realization of what Chi Wai has done. When Bun next appears in both versions, he'll ask Inspector Ho if he's seen a frightened boy, nervously insisting Chi Wai will try and take the gun from the boy. When Bun arrives to meet Inspector Ho after the inspector has failed to catch the intruder at the Indian man's apartment, Bun suddenly sees Inspector Ho, for the first time, as the frightened child. He asks Inspector Ho, "what happened to you?" and we see a look on Bun's face...almost like a grief at his impending Cassandra complex reaching its terminus at the end of the story. Ho has entered into the world of Bun's visions, and god seems to be telling Bun that Ho will play the role of the weak, frightened child at the denouement of the case. It all happened, and there was nothing Bun could do about it, while he was in the ground, receiving his visions.

But there's another omission in the international cut, right before Bun reappears. This is when Ho wakes up from the grave, unable to see visions like Bun, with Bun gone, having taking Ho's ID and his gun. There's the feeling on Ho's part that Bun has betrayed him in some way, abandoning him to the earth and tricking him so that Bun could go off on his own. Then Ho gets the call from his girlfriend, tipping him off to the raid on the Indian man's apartment. He joins the other cops and they raid the apartment. Ho sees the man in the werewolf mask, chases him across the street, and Ho is hit by a passing car––one he is running too fast to look out for.

Fine, that happens in both versions. What the international cut does then is very strange. Ho rolls over on the road, which is now deserted. He gets up, and, for no reason at all, starts running in a particular direction. He gets the call from Bun, is told to look out for the boy (in this version, the boy hasn't appeared yet, so the call seems so stunningly random in its details, presenting us with presentiments we haven't been shown visually, and which would never occur to us, because nothing about them is set up beforehand in the narrative), and then Bun's taxi arrives at the end of the street, where Ho has run to. Then there's the reveal of Ho as the frightened boy.

What is missing is a quick and vivid scene, between when Ho is hit by the car, and when Ho gets up off the ground. Ho is hit by the car, rolls over on the road...and sees the man in the werewolf mask, crouching at the other side of the street. The implication seems to be that the man in the mask has thrown himself out of the way of the car that hit Ho, landing in a crouch. The masked man steadies himself, and, before Ho can get his bearings, the man in the mask charges at him, drawing a police pistol. Ho reaches for his own holster and realizes there's no gun there. The man in the werewolf mask shoves the police pistol in Ho's face and mutters, in English, "where. is. your. GUN?" In English, in return, Ho exclaims, "lost it!" The man in the mask starts beating Ho with the police pistol, again and again, all over the face and head and shoulders, shouting with increasing anger, "Where! Is! Your! Gun!" Ho curls into a fetal position to shield his head from the blows, screaming, "lost it, LOST IT!" at the man. The man searches Ho's empty holster, then shoves his hand into Ho's pockets, and, finding nothing, backs away, the police gun trained on Ho, and runs away into the darkness.

Ho is a blubbering mess. He turns to right himself, gets unsteadily to his feat, looks around, and hears sounds in the distance, down the road. He starts running towards them, when Bun calls. Bun tells him to watch out for the frightened boy, to which Ho's nonplussed reply, in this cut at least, reads as humorous after the violence he's just been through––he's supposed to be looking out for a frightened kid, running around int he middle of the night, after being pistol-whipped by a wolfman? Then when Bun arrives, the mad detective starts in alarm as he sees Ho as the frightened boy, and exclaims, "what happened to you?" Frightened, little boy Ho cries and blames Bun for everything.

Without this scene, I don't think the sequence as a whole quite works. Ho's transformation into the frightened boy––and especially what it means for Bun––is robbed of a lot of meaning when we lose the vision of it coming to pass. When Bun sees Ho as the frightened boy, he realizes a level of guilt and responsibility that will motivate him for the rest of the movie. Bun's initially moved to investigate by his sense of curiosity and his desire to make something of value for people with his life. As the story progresses, Bun's world seems vindicated by the attention of Ho, who makes Bun's every hallucination the inspiration of a noble soul, divining meaning in the morass of criminal madness. Shortly after this section (if memory serves me right), the vindication of Bun's exile by Ho is underlined as being written in invisible ink, when we finally meet Bun's real-life wife, and we learn what a pathetic victim Bun is of even those closest to him. But motivation-wise, Bun has moved on from looking for validation of his pain to his final form, as the martyr who will redeem the frightened child Ho––paying the ultimate cost in the process. Yet without us witnessing the experience which unequivocally transforms Ho into the frightened child, the international cut feels more arbitrary about the character evolutions here. The appearance of the child is quite a non sequitur without being foregrounded––and I don't think we can really count as productive foreshadowing the bit just prior to the burial scene, where Ho asks Bun what he sees when he looks at Ho. Bun doesn't answer Ho, which is meant to be meaningful, but that doesn't explain Bun's surprise when he sees Ho as the frightened child. The surprise, however, does track in the Hong Kong cut. We're to imagine Bun sees Ho as a child already, but that in the vision, the frightened child isn't how Bun recognizes Ho. That's why Bun says "what happened to you?" when he sees Ho. It's not because––as implied in the international cut––he's never seen Ho as a child. It's because he's never seen Ho as a frightened child. He's hasn't put these visions together in his mind yet, and, in the Hong Kong cut, he's suddenly realizing that the child he's seen in the brief vision when he was buried was the same child he saw when he looked at Ho. At this point, Bun realizes the responsibility he has toward Ho. He took the detective's faith in him for granted, and by barreling forward, doing the investigation his way––moving to the beat of sudden, spastic inspiration and obsessive manias, breaking everything and begging forgiveness later––he's put Ho's life in danger. In seeing the whole transition happen in the Hong Kong cut, we realize better, I think, why Bun is willing to put his life on the line in the final sequence. He has to protect the boy he's reduced to a cowering bundle of fear, the boy who he's seen to be the ultimate target of all Chi-Wai's different personalities.

The film is also more evocative with these added sequences and shots. We see Bun as a sort of astral voyager, dreaming underground. We see Ho menaced by a terrifying, man-sized wolf, straight out of a fairy tale. Ultimately we know this to be Chi-Wai in a mask, but the appearance of the mask provides considerable distortion of our perception of what's going on, and it's hard to quite figure out what's going on here at first––yet in the end, it makes sense that Chi-Wai, having gotten away with his first crime, will move on to appropriating Ho's gun and starting the scheme over again. In the Hong Kong cut, the magical-realist elements end up interacting more fully and pleasingly with the criminal mystery in the film's "real world" scenes, driving plot and character motivations in a slightly more full-throated way. My experience has been, showing the different cuts to friends, that the international cut is a "good cop movie," while the Hong Kong cut is just a "great movie," period. Not perhaps a huge distinction for everyone, but my feeling is that the journey of To's career over the Milkyway films period (before then is a whole different career) is from gamesman-like genre exercises (The Longest Nite, Expect the Unexpected, A Hero Never Dies), To grows into a more confident and expressive filmmaker, who, by being able to say more with his films, begins to transcend the limits genre places on his work. So the later films' metafictional content (Throwdown, Vengeance, Triangle, Blind Detective, and, perhaps a dry-run for this, Fulltime Killer) and some of the other later films' plain old unique content (Life without Principle, Sparrow, Election, Drug War, Office) get percolated and presaged in the kettle of The Mission, Running Out of Time, PTU, Breaking News, Running on Karma, maybe even Where a Good Man Goes--an era in which To really works out his ability to say things with his movies, and also sort of discovers that he has some things to say. Election was the first film where I felt the freedom of mastery in To's work; Mad Detective was the movie where I realized, happily, that it wasn't a fluke, and that To really had reached for and found this way of expressing himself in these increasingly clever entertainments. In Mad Detective I felt the pathos To constructed, the way in which Bun's disability makes him unable to see how everyone around him uses him. I thought that was very unique; the film didn't have to do anything like that to be an engaging mystery yarn. Instead, the film is dangerous and strange, dark and amusing, alongside all the qualities of cop-based mystery-thriller––as well as unusually sympathetic to a character with a handicap (this will get more fully explored in Blind Detective, without losing the subtlety of this film). Character and story evolve in unexpected ways. It's dazzling. Back in the days of the asiandvdguide, I had someone from Eureka very angry at me for pointing out the differences in the different releases, and for publicly preferring the Hong Kong cut. These days the Milkyway creators have managed to all but remove the Hong Kong cut from circulation. But I think in the process they somewhat delimited the film's chances for acclaim. The film both makes more sense and is more magical-realist at the same time in the Hong Kong cut. My hunch is that that direction seemed aesthetically a little too far for Johnnie To. But I think it's where the movie had to go to be great. You can probably see I don't much care how blue the film ends up being––though I did miss the colors one saw in the Hong Kong cut––bright oranges and purples and browns bloom across the screen––though there is still tons of blue everywhere. It's fine, visually, either way. But the Hong Kong cut is just, to my mind, significantly superior, for what it does to the whole shape and purpose of the movie.

[sabbath]

To me The Mission is the saddest single omission, but I tend to agree in general. I think The Mission is the film which really paves the way for the later, richer movies––along with being the film which Exiled is a really direct sequel for.

In case you missed the news, the producer confirmed that they're restoring The Mission (along with Zhang Yimou's To Live! and Raise the Red Lantern, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Puppetmaster and A City of Sadness) and all will be premiered at the Udine Far East Film Festival next spring.

[Michael Kerpan]

sabbath -- What grat news -- these are some of my favorite films ever. It would be great if these get first class home video releases (not too likely to get to Udine, I'm afraid).

[feihong]

That's exciting! Thanks for the good news.

[yoloswegmaster]

SpoilerShow

If I remember correctly, in the interviews with To in Stephen Teo's book, "Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film," To says it was a mistake to call Patrick Yau the director, and that the work Yau did was more like a location manager. He implies pretty heavily that he directed the films himself. In retrospect, I think it's entirely obvious. To's style is all over the films, his use of the camera, his particular film interests...when other Milkyway filmmakers direct it's usually very obvious how different To's visual language is. Super-tired, but I will try and dig this section of the interview up.

Turns out in the Teo book, To's answer is much more thorny and complicated. Here it is. Teo begins by saying, "We now know that in fact it was you who directed the films that Patrick Yau was credited for." And To replies:

"There are various ways of dividing the work. Wai Ka-fai, for example, came out of scriptwriting. He is a very skilled screenwriter, but in terms of production, he wasn't mature enough as a director. The director must know what he wants. He must know the content of the shot even if he can't tell you where to put the camera. In this sense, he wasn't mature, at the time. Now, of course, he has become a mature director. With someone like Wai Ka-fai, I would give my opinions, or if I like his screenplays, I would help him find a producer. I don't interfere too much. With other directors, I would give them a subject and let them develop it. I insist that they incorporate my views and ideas. Another kind of cooperation is when I have set up the whole project, done the casting and the director just carries out the execution. This is the kind of director that Patrick Yau is. I feel that my cooperation with Patrick Leung and with Patrick Yau were not too successful because I would give them too much of my own opinions which they could not accept––but I had to be mindful of the investors and so I insisted they did it my way. Patrick Yau has since departed, and that's only fair if his desire is to make his own films. Yau directed The Longest Nite and Expect the Unexpected. On The Longest Nite, I had taken him on as an experiment but he couldn't fulfill my wishes. Half-way through, I took over."

Teo asks why Yau was still credited as the director.

Johnnie To:

"Well, I had wanted him to succeed and be recognized as a director. I didn't want to pull him down half-way through the film, so I helped him finish it. I went onto the set and told him what to do, and he then went on to tell others what to do. After that experience, I felt that it was a good practice for him and I let him work on Expect the Unexpected. But then the same thing happened, and I had to take over the direction. After these two films, I said to him, why don't you see what you can do outside of the company? He was feeling fed-up himself. Both he and Patrick Leung were my former assistant directors, and perhaps they both felt that I was supervising them. Therefore, if they left the company, it might be better for them. That's how I feel. If there were opportunities to work together again, we would, but there haven't been. "

To goes on almost immediately to make the same exact claim about Moment of Romance, that Benny Chan directed half of it, and that he, To, finished it off. I remember reading another interview where To called Patrick Yau a location manager rather than the director of the films, but I guess it wasn't in the Teo book. It looks like Wikipedia claims Patrick Yau directed The Odd One Dies on his own, and I don't think the Teo interview addresses Yau's contribution. It's all pretty funny, too, in retrospect, because To makes a complaint of Tsui Hark being a similar kind of invasive producer on The Big Heat. Turns out To wasn't above visiting the same indignities on others as he resented on The Big Heat.

...aaaannnd here's the bit from the Teo book on To directing The Odd One Dies.

Stephen Teo: I'd like you to confirm first that you directed this film.

Johnnie To: Yes. Patrick Yau is the nominal director.

So it looks all to be confirmed from To's own point of view, at least.

Thank you for this! I've actually had the Stephen Teo book on my Kindle for a while now and I guess this is sign for me to read it. You are correct that To's style is very present and noticeable in the aforementioned films, especially in something like Expect the Unexpected and how he is able to meticulously blend the cop-thriller and rom-com genres together and is sort of a precursor to Blind Detective. This is actually one of my fav To films and I hope for a good home video release of it, though I noticed that a French label released it on blu a couple years ago but it sadly has no Eng subs.

Speaking of Stephen Teo, would you recommend his book on the HK film industry? I've only read David Bordwell's book (which I've already raved about), and was curious to know if Teo's book deviates from Bordwell's and provides information not mentioned in the latter.

[feihong]

Yeah, it's a shame there isn't a better source. The French blu rays of Longest Nite and Expect the Unexpected both are scanned-in, so the picture looks to be about 1.85:1, instead of 2.35:1––so they're disappointing discs, missing the sides of the image. At the time The Longest Nite and Expect the Unexpected came out, I was hugely excited for them. I think in recent years, when I've reviewed them, I feel much more passionate about a lot of the later films––though A Hero Never Dies has really increased in my estimation from when I first saw it. Blind Detective is a huge favorite of mine.

I haven't read Teo's books, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions, or Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. I have just read The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, which features a lot of Teo's translations, one of his essays, and some of his editing, and I've read the Johnie To book. Not thrilled with the Shaw book's writing, though there is lots of information. The Johnnie To book is pretty interesting, though I don't think there's much analysis of themes in the individual films. Teo looks at the films as entertaining action movies, and doesn't let talk of themes and pervasive ideas in the films beyond talk of games get in the way. It's a very good book expanding on To's style and why he does what he does with it––but To's more buried themes stay buried. I feel like Bordwell gets at stuff that resonates with me more often? But I think the Teo books are, in general, full of interesting stuff.

[Lemmy Caution]

Great post on Mad Detective, feihong.
Interesting thread all around.

I wonder how/if/when HK filmmaking will change now that Hong Kong has been fully subsumed into the PRC, as just another Chinese city subject to censorship and repression. You'd think the kind of Johnny To action films described above would be relatively safe, but a lot of sensitivities and off limit topics in China; they don't take kindly to portrayals of police and other government authorities as corrupt or inept. Not aware if they have started censoring HK films yet, but if not, you can be certain that day will come.

[Maltic]

There was a discussion of this, with some funny examples, when Fight Club was released with a different ending in the PRC last year.

here

[Mr Sausage]

Tsui definitely saw where things were going and transitioned in the mid-2000s to big nationalist blockbusters, with all the patriotism, xenophobia, historical revisionism, and deference to official authority you might imagine. This has worked out well for him—he may well be the most successful of the old guard Hong Kong filmmakers still working. But then Tsui always seemed like a canny opportunist. He remade himself in the early 80s from a gadfly New Wave experimentalist into a big populist filmmaker, even pioneering the SFX blockbuster in Hong Kong, when he found his career not taking off. He pivoted again in the early 90s to swordplay and martial arts historical movies, and was one of the earliest to try his hand at a career in America when the handover loomed. Now he works on mainland productions giving modern Chinese audiences what they want.

Tsui has always seen the film market better than most. I wouldn’t doubt that fewer and fewer Hong Kong filmmakers will get opportunities to make something besides those big, safe spectacles.

[feihong]

Looks like Cargo Records/TG Vision in Germany has listed a supposedly "uncut" blu ray of The Killer for December 8th –– followed by Bullet in the Head and a 2-pack of Prison on Fire 1 & 2 on February 23rd.

The Cargo/TG blu rays so far have been all over the place in quality, frequently seeming to re-grain softened images––though generally producing higher-quality images than have so far been seen of a lot of films (the Eureka and 88films releases surpass them, of course). And the discs do have English subtitle tracks. It looks for now as if they are abandoning their fancy book-wrapped cases with built-in booklets, in favor of standard blu ray cases––albeit with a faintly classy grey finish. Their previous release of Once a Thief was a strange release, seemingly culled from an existing film print––giving the film the look of a repertory screening. This might result in a decently cool blu ray for some of the John Woo classics––which don't seem to be released anywhere else.

Also, with the lower production values for the physical media, the pricing seems to be a little different than in the past. The discs all used to cost about $38USD, but now the prices are variable. The Killer is priced at about $30, the two Prison on Fire films at $23, and Bullet in the Head back up at $38. Interesting.

[yoloswegmaster]

I'm not sure if these German releases are actually legit or not. The label said that the release of The Killer is legit and even sent it to the German ratings board for approval, and are even claiming that it's from a 2K remaster. It should be noted, however, that the cover that they are using is the exact same cover used for the Hong Kong Rescue release (and we all know that HKR wasn't exactly a legal operation):

SpoilerShow

Kung Fu Bob also had an astute observation by pointing out that the last title that HKR had been hyping before shutting down was for Bullet in the Head, which is now all of a sudden getting a release from a shady German company despite the legal tapes surrounding the rights. It seems like HKR closed down because they couldn't keep up with the amount of orders and are now working with sketchy German labels that can provide assitance with the demand.

Side note: is the German release of Tiger on the Beat worth getting?

[feihong]

I think the Tiger on Beat release is worth it. It's not perfect, but I've never seen the movie look so good before. Not 100% sure the disc isn't a re-grained version of the ultra-soft Hong Kong blu ray, but even if that is what it is, the image quality is way sharper than on previous home video versions, and the colors look gorgeous.

The potential HKR connection for the John Woo films is something I noticed, as well. It's possible, isn't it, that Cargo is the legitimate distributor for Germany, and that they are simply sourcing materials from HKR? That would bode pretty well for the Bullet in the Head release, at least, since the HKR release was being sourced from a 35mm print. I know there's a feeling that what HKR has done is not great, but the actual owners of these film rights frequently treat the film quite indiscriminately. I don't know, maybe I just tend to cut bootleggers some slack.