movie review - Hong Kong Corrupter
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
I found this bizarre Chow Yun-Fat movie in the local rental outfit's small (and dwindling) foreign section, and rented it because I thought it would be an interesting taste of mid-90's HK action weirdness.
I was part right. I couldn't have forseen that the first third of the movie would have been set and filmed in the neighbourhood of Vancouver that I moved from just last month.
In short; this is a flick about a gangster who loses his wife and child and ten years of his life (spent in prison) in one day. His wife is shot by Italian gangsters, his infant daughter is whisked away by his brother for safety's sake, and he winds up in prison because he guns down the man who ordered the shooting that resulted in his wife's death in front of twenty cops.
During his time in prison (again, purportedly only ten years), he tries to stay in touch with his brother and daughter, but somehow loses the connection. Eventually he gets out. He immediately heads for Hong Kong, and tries to find his daughter.
He fails, but he does manage to find his daughter's best friend. Somehow, the ten years that passed in the Vancouver prison resulted in his daughter reaching her late teens (from infancy) in HK. This is only relevant because the story only really begins to take shape once Yun-Fat's reformed gangster teams up with his daughter's friend. At this point, despite the immense sentimentality, there is a worthwhile movie taking shape.
In all, I can't recommend this one. A bizarre subplot involving the take-over of the HK faction of the old gang by a new cadre of young turks is in poor taste and done in a slap-dash fashion. Unfortunately, this on-and-off subplot gets a lot of screen time, and winds up obliterating the main story in the end. Also, the sentimentality of the main plot devours any real development between the gangster and the stand-in daughter.
Not recommended.