This excellent crime thriller is a testament to real filmmaking.
Johnnie Mak’s story of a group of mainland thieves is a gritty,
realistic, and compelling action drama that never moralizes
- thus realizing its power. Professional stuntman/bit player
Lin Wei stars as the leader of a group of mainland thieves,
who uses his residence in Hong Kong to plan a hit on a jewelry
store. His cohorts all hail from the same town, and all dream
of taking the dough back home and being rich.
However, their experiences in traveling
to and residing in Hong Kong are fraught with difficulties,
chief among them their status as Mainland Chinese in HK. Each
has their own personal issues to work through, but this isn’t
a feel-good fuzzy film about redemption and ultimate reconciliation.
The characters are stymied or even undone by their disassociation
with Hong Kong; their success and/or failure hinges on who
they are. In the end, they don’t affect the situation - it
affects them.
The casting is a major key. From
top to bottom, the actors are mainly amateurs but their performances
are starkly real. What’s interesting is that no one appears
to be the good or bad guy. The thieves want the money but
the cops want the thieves, and each commits reprehensible
acts to get what they want. There are no heroes here. There’s
only a society that loses. This film is a rarity: an genre
picture that transcends its iconography and becomes art. This
is a startling work of fiction that speaks volumes about its
people and society - and still manages to entertain. (Kozo
2000) |
