Directed by: Wilson Yip. Still scratching the Sammo
Hung itch, I picked up this one with pretty high hopes—Sammo playing an
evil gangster, with a goatee and long flowing hair. Already pretty
promising! And I’m happy to report, this one was definitely more
enjoyable than the last Sammo outing I had, Once Upon a Time in Shanghai.
I can’t tell if it’s because the movie itself was appreciably better,
or if my aesthetic judgement is limited to how much screentime Sammo
gets. I think it’s just that I like this world a little better, the
recognizably compromised world of ruthless and amoral gangsters (who
still have a heart, and family members, etc) and crooked cops (who are
so devoted to catching the bad guys that they will become bad guys,
etc). I love seeing such familiar and embedded tropes from the
gangster-cop movie brought to life in a non-American context, in a way
that is probably decades-old. From what I remember, in Hard-Boiled,
the morals aren’t quite as murky as they are here, but that was a while
ago and my memory doesn’t serve. There’s just something about the
development of this movie that feels very satisfying, from the beginning
right to the crushing, Rod Serling/O. Henry ending (but not, in my
opinion, up to the final shot of the shoes sitting on the beach, which I
felt was a bit too on the nose, a bit too much of an ending where there
already was a satisfying ending). I guess I don’t need to go on about
it too much—this movie was great! It has everything: cops, gangsters,
conflict within cop ranks, a tremendous scale of gangster activity that
you never see in American gangster films—hundreds of these young toughs
just hanging around—and such knock-down, drag-out fight scenes, like the
one at the end, my God! There’s something about watching Sammo, a hefty
middle-aged dude, throwing down with these young guys who look like
Olympic athletes, that’s so satisfying. I think this Sammo itch has been
scratched.
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