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Review
by Kozo: |
Herman
Yau helms another foray into the triad genre with
A Mob Story. Produced by Andrew Lau of Infernal
Affairs fame, the film received its premiere at
the 2007 Hong Kong International Film Festival before
going straight to video. The Cantonese title of the
film literally means, "Person in Jiang Hu", highlighting
the philosophical gist of the film. This is a movie
about man's existence in the underworld, but unlike
the popular image of brotherhood and honor among gangsters,
we get this solemn lesson: being in the underworld
is crap. This is a film that basically tells us that
if you're in the underworld, you'll be stabbed in
the back, your friends will turn on you for the smallest
of reasons, and brotherhood means jack. Women are
also bad news, and revenge isn't just empty, it's
stupid. The best thing about the underworld? Usually
everyone else is so busy fighting amongst themselves
that you can go unnoticed. That is, until someone
remembers that they hate you, after which they come
gunning for you with a pronounced selfish glee. Strangely,
the above description also sounds like real life.
Julian Cheung stars as Seven,
a legendary assassin who returns to the game by offing
a series of triad bosses. His latest job involves
taking down a beer girl (Mandy Chiang) who's supposed
to be a massive jinx on her boyfriends. However, her
current squeeze Fatt (Hugo Ng) is a sleazy crime boss
who just so happens to be the same guy who killed
Seven's father back when Seven's father was a crime
boss. You see, in the world of A Mob Story,
the method of career advancement seems to be that
you conspire to kill your own boss, whereupon you
usurp their position and everyone gets in line to
follow you - that is, until it's your turn to get
stabbed in the back. Rinse, repeat, etc. The majority
of the mob bosses in A Mob Story encounter
violence and/or death thanks to the work of their
supposed loyal underlings. You'd think that if the
betrayal rate were this high, people would simply
wise up and not become bosses. Oddly, nobody seems
to note this occupational hazard and lines up to be
a backstabbing victim anyway.
Seven ends up botching the
hit and befriending the beer girl, after which the
film gets a massive location shift. Thanks to pissing
off Fatt's men, Seven hightails it to Taiwan to go
into hiding. Once there, he enlists the services of
a betelnut girl named Chi-Ling (Yin Shin) for a minor
striptease in the back of the betelnut shop. The break
is good for some onscreen female flesh, but Seven's
real reason for showing up at the betelnut shop isn't
for the lapdance, it's to find old pal Goblin (Cheung
Tat-Ming), who once upon a time was Seven's buddy
back in Hong Kong. The two quickly rekindle their
friendship, but Goblin has issues, namely a raging
attraction to Chi-Ling plus a massive debt to a wacky
Taiwanese gang boss. To pay back his debt, Goblin
is assigned to kill a rival mob boss, but Goblin also
wants Chi-Ling's freedom in the bargain. He gets his
request, and with that extra carrot dangled in front
of him, Goblin no longer adheres to any idea of honor
or brotherhood. Cue brother vs. brother squabbles
and the laughable idea that Cheung Tat-Ming may actually
be able to take out Julian Cheung in a fair fight.
But this is the world of
A Mob Story, meaning nobody gives a crap if
a fight is fair or not. And even if Goblin gets Chi-Ling's
freedom, so what? Just because she's freed doesn't
mean she'll go running into Goblin's arms. She seems
to be much more enamored of Seven anyway, dissing
Goblin verbally, and acting like a Grade-A tease in
front of Seven's vaguely disinterested mug. Despite
being the most sensible person in the film, Seven
joins the list of people who act stupidly by not telling
Goblin about Chi-Ling's obvious duplicity. Goblin's
possessiveness of Chi-Ling's nubile form continues
to grow in leaps and bounds, while Seven weakly protests
about his buddy's choice of girls. For a tough hitman,
Seven is remarkably passive, and only seems to spring
into action when somebody is looking to put a knife
in his back. Julian Cheung glowers effectively as
Seven, but he doesn't give the character enough energy
or charisma to make him that engaging. Cheung Tat
Ming is more effective as the pathetic Goblin, and
gives the character an appropriate rodent-like quality.
Newcomer Yin Shin has a refreshingly sexy presence
as Chi-Ling, though her character isn't fleshed out
that much.
The lack of explication seems
to be a problem with the whole film, as the themes
are kind of thrown out there into one big mob film
melee, where a million clichés are acknowledged
or debunked, but nothing really sticks. The film effectively
drives home its most prevalent theme, that the mob
life is virtually guaranteed to disappoint anyone
with a shred of righteousness. People generally lie,
cheat, steal, and barter with objects that don't belong
to them. A bad life means a bad fate, and even the
characters that triumph will likely one day get theirs.
However, other themes and story ideas are more muddled;
large weight is given to the Mandy Chiang subplot,
but it's not clear where the filmmakers are headed
with it. One problem is the film seems to sell her
as a major character, only to completely drop her
when the film shifts to Taiwan. She eventually reenters
the picture, but her connection to Seven just seems
serendipitous, and not a reflection of any greater
intent from the filmmakers. Considering the killings
and character connections, there sometimes seems to
be larger overarching theme or story at work. However,
the connections don't really lead anywhere, except
to have characters show up later to kill or be killed.
It's all rather intriguing, but sometimes seems aimless.
Still, A Mob Story's
offbeat details, dark tone and casual nihilism are
effective. Some of the film's jiang hu discussion is muddled and inconclusive, but at other times,
the film displays a satisfying dark wit. One mob boss
casually tortures people while a little girl plays
hopscotch nearby, and people are violently attacked
and killed with almost banal regularity. The attacks
hurt too; A Mob Story has violence to spare,
resulting in severed heads, chopped off fingers, slashed
throats, a knife to the groin, and a few dozen whacks
to the head with a brick. Yau serves up the violence
in appreciably brutal style, and does his best to
work with his HD-video image. Unlike Billy Chung,
director of the similarly produced Undercover (both films were produced by Andrew Lau as a part
of his Fortune Star HD-video project), Yau uses various
techniques to make sure the video image doesn't distract.
The effort helps; casual viewers may not notice or
care that this is a shot-on-video feature.
However, casual viewers may
not care, period. A Mob Story isn't the most
crowd-pleasing motion picture, as it seldom does anything
seductive with its dark material. Despite Yau's efforts
at making this a non-video experience, A Mob Story doesn't possess much cinematic verve, and is weighed
down by its unfocused screenplay and sometimes shoddy
acting. However, more discerning viewers may enjoy
the dark wit and the odd details. Yau packs the film
with random ideas and characters, like a mahjong player
lacking a limb, or an encounter with a is-he-dead-or-not
crime boss. The oddities give the film a color and
dimension not seen in more straightforward films,
and help make it more than just another Hong Kong
gangster film. On the whole, A Mob Story is
a nice little surprise, and manages to be much more
effective than similar films of its low-budget ilk.
The film may not add up to all that much, but given
Hong Kong Cinema's recent lack of quality output, A Mob Story is easily better than what we usually
get. (Kozo 2007) |
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