D:
Tung-Shing Yee. P: John Sham, Ying-Hsiang Yam. W: Tung-Shing Yee, Keith Li,
Yiu-Wing Kwam. Ph: Wilson Chan. M: Lowell Lo. St: Lung Ti (Sunny Koo), Tony
Chiu-Wai Leung (Sai), Tony Ka Fai Leung (Captain Chan), Elain Jin, Ronald Wong
(William Wong)
“Are there really so many guns in Hong Kong?”
Opening
on a typically tedious day at the bank – the manager is about to foreclose on
someone’s business, elderly ladies predict how world events will affect share
prices – normality is shattered when novice criminals Sai and Wong enter. On
the cusp of the hold-up Sai has to attend to his scrawny friend, whose nerves escalate
to an epileptic seizure. In his panic, Sai’s gun is revealed and the bank’s Pakistani
guard aims at them. Sai shoots the guard and takes the occupants of the bank hostage.
Unbeknownst to them, ruthless gangster Sunny Koo has slipped into the bank and
what follows is a claustrophobic drama in which the duo learn their limitations
while Koo discovers a shred of humanity.
Taking
as its cue Sidney Lumet’s masterpiece Dog
Day Afternoon, this minor thriller, soaked in the machismo of Hong Kong cinema,
eschews sexual and social politics in favour of a less convoluted but similarly
taut character-driven drama. Sai and Wong are strictly platonic friends and
there are no chants of “Attica!” to inflame peaceniks gathering at the crime
scene. External scenes, hindered by budgetary restrictions, comprise mainly a police
stakeout headed by the virtuous Captain Chan, whose approach, all nobility and
negotiation, is jeopardised at every turn by his trigger-happy superiors.
Sai
and Wong’s bid at executing a bank robbery is amateurish, hampered by noirish twists
of fate; Wong’s medical condition throws their plans into turmoil and, when Sai
breaks open a till, yellow powder explodes over his face. Making a deal with
the police to reduce their sentences seems the only response to a botched job.
Soon
to be a top-billed star under the direction of John Woo and Wong Kar-Wai, Chiu-Wai
Leung had clearly been studying Lumet’s film and makes an animated stab at channelling
Pacino’s edginess.
Ti
Lung, reprising the role of a mellowing ageing gangster, soon gains the upper
hand. Initially intending to rob the bank, he begins a tense game of
brinkmanship in which he demands that the police bring his convict girlfriend
to him in exchange for sparing the hostages’ lives. The infamous Koo provokes
differing reactions; some are fearful of his reputation; some mistake him for a
Chinese criminal betraying a prejudice for mainlanders; while one elderly
gentleman is sycophantic, discussing crime on the peninsula and asking about
the authenticity of gangster films like Long
Arm of the Law.
Koo’s
moral compass moves in perplexing ways. He chides Sai and Wong, persuading them
to stand up to the loan shark Sai owes money to. With a yellow racoon’s stripe
across his face, Sai flexes his machismo by inhaling the flame from his lighter
– a trick gleaned from Chow Yun Fat in A
Better Tomorrow and one among a smattering of references to Hong Kong’s gangster
cycle – before calling the loan shark to threaten his life. When the bank
manager speaks in a demeaning way to the bank’s guard (one suspects because of
his race), Koo encourages the latter not to be subservient. A farcical sequence
in which Koo forces the hostages to play a Cantonese version of rock, paper, scissors,
to judge who will be the first corpse to be used as a bargaining chip, culminates
in Koo angrily chastising the loser, a teenage girl, because of her histrionic
reaction.
Ti
Lung does get to demonstrate his imposing physicality, despite a lack of action
set-pieces, when one of the hostages dares to confront him. Where he excels,
however, is when his girlfriend tells him her feelings have thawed. His
emotional turmoil is the catalyst for a sensual and brutal finalé. The
director, once a Shaw Brothers regular and half-brother of Ti Lung’s old sparring
partner David Chiang, handles the material carefully, but there are few of the
stylistic touches that would distinguish the best Cantonese crime films of the
time.
Despite
its rather pedestrian aesthetic and a script that could have benefited from
more tension, Yee elicits fine performances from the ensemble cast. It may not
be an outstanding example of Heroic Bloodshed, but there are enough quirks here
to make it worth sampling.
Clark Hodgkiss
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