Film Pairings — Two By To, Johnnie To That Is

Want a little poetry with your blood and guts?  Initially, I thought about pairing Hong Kong director Johnnie To’s Vengeance with Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. There are many parallels.  If you don’t mind changing culture, time and geography, it’s not a bad idea.  Unforgiven is one of my favorite movies.  However, for this double feature, I’m recommending another film by Johnnie To — Mad Detective.

Vengeance is a result of a French and Hong Kong partnership. French singer/actor Johnny Hallyday plays a hitman turned restaurateur who revisits his first profession after his daughter, her husband and children are slaughtered by a Hong Kong gangster.  A little rusty at the game and unfamiliar with Macau where the cold-blooded murders take place, he finds a professional hit threesome to help him get revenge. There is a bit of a twist, and in literary terms, an important one. The viewer learns fairly quickly that Hallyday’s character has a bullet in his brain from a long-ago job. However the bullet is moving and medical opinion is that he is losing his memory. He is compelled to complete his mission before he forgets what it is. The philosophical question is: If you cannot remember the harm that is done to you and the ones you loved, how important is it to avenge it? This lends, for me, a question about the usual satisfaction of seeing justice done. 

Hallyday, with his tiny snake-like eyes, is magnetic.  The cinematography is top notch.  The acting is superb. Anthony Wong, is just one example. He plays one of Hallyday’s hired thugs, creating something strangely, yet believably honorable and tender in his role as a killer. The Cantonese language film was released in 2009.

There was both surrealism and poetry (must be the French questioning the meaning of existence again) in Vengeance.  Mad Detective, an earlier film (2007), offers much more surrealism and perhaps a tad less poetry. Lau Ching-Wan plays a once top detective, but who is now off the force and shunned as dangerously crazy. He is.  I wouldn’t want him watching my kids.  Nonetheless he is brought into the case by a young and admiring young police detective perplexed by a case of a missing cop.  What we see as a viewer is often what the crazy cop sees — the personalities of those he meets, some of them with multiple personalities.  It is disorienting at first, perhaps a little too outside the box. But if you hold on a little longer, you pick it up — a tribute to the cinematographer and to the actor.  Chinese-American actor Andy On shows true leading man abilities as the young detective in need of mentorship, but gets more than he bargained for. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for the police and eventually even for the young do-gooder cop to accept the crazy man’s antics. His actions, while they make less and less sense to the characters in the film, start to make more sense to the audience. It is a bit of directorial magic.

These are violent films. The world is a dark place.  Nobody gets out without paying the price. My guess is that we’re back to sipping the hard stuff.  So stay home and don’t water down the whiskey.

Film Pairings — Stylish, Violent, Quirky Assault On Your Senses

I love crime films with tightly constructed stories, clever plots twists and surprise endings. The other night I saw a film, Love, Cheat and Steal, with talented actors. Interesting plot, clever twists all the way to the end. But it was boring. Flat. I wanted to throttle the director. No mood, bad editing, absolutely mediocre cinematography. This is a moving picture, I wanted to say to someone. “It is supposed to move. The so-called action had the energy of a puddle.

Happily, I’ll excuse a slightly sloppy plot, maybe some unnecessary quirks, even a little self-indulgence if the film moves in such a way that I can’t take my eyes off the screen, that even if I am confused at times, I’m never bored — that my senses of sight and sound are fully engaged. These two films move. They have the energy of lightning storms.

We go to the Far East.

Hong Kong: Wong Kar-wai is one of China’s most famous directors (In The Mood For Love, 2046). In Fallen Angels he tackles two stories, a violent one of a hit man, the other a nearly absurd tale of a young man who makes himself so obnoxious people pay him to go away, an interesting scam. The humor of the second story intertwines nicely, playing off the cold harsh, but violence of the first. It all seems absurd, futile. Yet such futility and such violence are so stylishly portrayed, one simply gives in to the artist’s vision. You’ll also get a street-wise view of Hong Kong in 1995. In the end the director provides masterful sound and cinematography. The film is sometimes paired with the director’s Chunking Express and is part of a long list of mind-bending films from this talented, eccentric director, including the multiple award-winning Happy Together.

Bangkok: Though I don’t know for a fact, it’s hard to imagine that director Oxide Pang Chun wasn’t immensely influenced by Wong Kar-Wai. But even if that were true that doesn’t mean one is less than the other, merely that neither seems to be constrained by conventional story telling or standard cinematography. The movie, Tesseract (2003), based on Alex Garland’s underrated novel, is also underrated. Great book. Great movie. We get glimpses of four residents of a dumpy hotel in Bangkok. There is a drugged-out hippie trying to get a few bucks by transporting a highly valued, highly illicit product out of Thailand, an English psychologist researching Bangkok’s street kids, a hit-woman trying to heal her wounds after a botched assassination and a kid doing his best to survive in a corrupt, adult world. As it happens, all four of their worlds collide in a film that is almost hallucinogenically expressive. The cast is incredibly good, particularly Alexander Rendel as the kid. Western viewers will recognize and appreciate Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the young drug courier.

We’re not traveling among the rich and famous in these films, so let’s make it a beer night again. Though I’m told China’s best, if not most, exported beer is Snow Beer, I’ve not found it. Tsingtao is ubiquitous, however. When you switch to the Bangkok setting, go for Thai beer. The conventional wisdom is Sing Ha. For me it’s Chang. The label has elephants on it. But don’t let that put you off.

Then again, in terms of violence, these are hardcore films. If you want alternatives to beer, but a sense of place, maybe Maotai, a Chinese hard liquor distilled from sorghum. Strong. For the Thai movie, some Mekhong (or Mekong) Whiskey (more like rum), made from sugar cane or molasses and rice. Also strong.