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Review
by Kozo: |
It's finally here.
SPL has long been on the Internet radar as the
Hong Kong movie to watch. Early Internet buzz pegged
it as the answer to every Hong Kong action fan's prayers.
Finally, a return to the eighties glory days! Gritty
action! No popstars! And a plot where IT ALL GOES
TO HELL! The hype on film forums and in-the-know sites
has been deafening, and this is their message: if
you're a Hong Kong movie fan, then SPL is the
movie you've been waiting for. Are they right? Or
is this the ranting of action fans wearing rose-colored
glasses? A little of both actually. While SPL
is probably better-regarded because it has no contemporaries,
it's still a good little action noir in its own right.
In short: see this movie.
Simon Yam is Senior Inspector Chan, a hard boiled
cop with a raging grudge. Back in 1994, Chan was caught
in a car-on-car smash-em-up that took down a key criminal
witness and his wife. The one who benefited: triad
kingpin Po (Sammo Hung, sporting nifty tattoos and
facial hair). The couple's young daughter survived,
and Chan now cares for her. Meanwhile, Po is desperately
trying to conceive with his wife. Cut to three years
later (now it's 1997, hmmmm) and Po now has a baby
son. Chan still has the young girl, plus his grudge
against Po is still mighty potent. Enter Inspector
Ma (a tan and eternally posing Donnie Yen), who's
supposed to take over Chan's unit when the still-angry
Chan steps down in three days. Chan's three subordinates
(Liu Kai-Chi, Danny Summer, and Ken Chang) are also
rightfully pissed off, and are willing to go to extreme
lengths to take down Po before Chan retires. When
Ma realizes the steps these guys are willing to take
to achieve justice, his temper flares up too. Meanwhile,
Po is pissed at all these cops who keep bothering
him. That's a lot of angry people.
But anger is good, because when people are mad,
they break things with wild abandon. And a lot of
stuff gets broken in SPL: tables, lamps, windows,
bones, and probably your eardrums. If SPL and Dragon Squad are any evidence, the key to making
an action picture nowadays is cranking up the sound.
Punches and kicks have the sonic force of minor cannons,
and the score by Chan Kwong-Wing (composer for those
dinky Infernal Affairs movies) is bombastic
with a capital "B". Still, the bombast is not overbearing;
director Wilson Yip brings an assured and powerfully
gripping style to the neo-noir underworld of SPL.
This is a stylized cops-and-robbers world, where the
good guys are corrupt but still righteously cool,
and the bad guys are irretrievably nasty but still
pathetically human. True to Wilson Yip's earlier films,
he loads SPL with minor nuggets of character
and recognizable humanity. This sort of genre/character
cocktail once typified Yip's films, and while the
effect feels more obligatory here than in Yip's earlier
works (see Bio-Zombie or Bullets Over Summer for classic Wilson Yip), the moments are not unfelt.
The emotional sequences sometimes stop the movie cold,
but at other times they provide a minor, and even
subtly compelling break in the action.
And yes, there's action. While not as nonstop
or balls-to-the-wall as the hype machine might lead
one to believe, SPL features enough fists-flying,
body-slamming action to satiate the Hong Kong Cinema
faithful. Underrated action star and former Wushu
champ Wu Jing (Drunken Monkey) shows up as
Jet, Po's pet killer, and he makes the most of his
rather minor role. The first half of SPL features
a protracted setup as the players get introduced,
and the major conflict (Chan wants Po taken down now,
but Ma objects to Chan's ethically-challenged methods)
delivered. Donnie Yen struts his lightning-quick kung-fu
stuff in a few short sequences, but it isn't until
Wu Jing enters the picture that SPL hits action
overdrive. Wu's movements are convincingly fast and
deadly, and the actor looks like he's having a ball
as the deliciously sadistic Jet. Yen is no slouch
himself, and the alleyway knife vs. baton face-off
between he and Wu is the highlight of the picture.
Their duel feels less like a choreographed action
sequence and more like two very skilled guys going
at it; as they attack and retreat in quick succession,
they seem to be studying each other's moves and picking
up on each other's strengths and weaknesses. The sequence
is as enthralling as martial arts action gets.
Sammo Hung gets to strut his stuff too. The Venerable
Large One cuts loose midway through the picture in
a building lobby brawl where it takes upwards of three
guys to contain him. He's also around for the film's
coup de grace, a glass-breaking, body-slamming
battle with Donnie Yen that's a bit over the top,
but still quite fun stuff. The rationale for the fight
is a bit weak, however. At a certain point, it seems
that characters forget where they're supposed to be
and simply hang around because they're scheduled for
a fight. You'd think that after most of your goons
get taken out, you'd order up some more lackeys before
an exceptionally tough kung-fu master cop enters the
building. No dice. Sammo has to face Donnie mano-a-mano,
and the fact that it even gets that far lacks any
sort of narrative credibility.
But hey, who cares? By the time the fighting
rolls around, SPL has engendered so much audience
goodwill that Chow Yun-Fat and the 12 Girls Band could
come crashing through the roof on ziplines and the
paying audience wouldn't bat an eye. As an ace crime
thriller, SPL is more generic than genuinely
enthralling, but like the great HK movies of the eighties
(e.g. Tiger Cage, also starring Simon Yam and
Donnie Yen), it's not the story, script, or acting
that necessarily wins the day, but something that
can only be called cinema panache. SPL has
it in spades, such that its minor debits can be easily
forgotten. Slow second act? Doesn't matter. The usual
Donnie Yen preening for the camera? Forgotten. Borderline
pointless symbolism? Not a factor. Actually, SPL is much better than most current wannabe crime thrillers,
and possesses a satisfying, if not unpredictable series
of Hong Kong Cinema "moments" that fans should cotton
to pretty damn quick. For longtime fans, SPL is a gift. Please enjoy it. (Kozo 2005) |
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