Hey folks, Harry here... let the call go out... I'm looking for TWILIGHT SAMURAI!!! Man this film sounds great. I'm disappointed in the word regarding Johnnie To's PTU, but the low down on TWILIGHT SAMURAI... which sounds a bit like the UNFORGIVEN of the Samurai film... well it's got me anxious as hell to lay my paws upon it! Here ya go, hopefully Marshy will keep us up to date on all the good stuff coming out of the Hong Kong Film Festival!
Hey Harry,
Went to the opening night of the Hong Kong film festival last night and saw two rather interesting flicks - firstly Yamada Yoji's "The Twilight Samurai" and then local boy Johnnie To's "PTU".
TWILIGHT SAMURAI
Twilight Samurai was absolutely awesome. The story centres around humble samurai Iguchi (played by Sanada Hiroyuki) who since his wife died is forced to look after his two prepubescent daughters and senile old mother-in-law all by himself. Suffice to say he is barely able to look after himself, turning up in front of the local village chancellor in tattered robes and stinking of fish. This is a man with no delusions of grandeur, no ambitions to be a great warrior. He was simply born into the Samurai caste and so has to live with the status when all he desires is to lead a simple life and look after the women in his household as best he can.
His problems worsen however when his childhood sweetheart Tomoe returns to the village after a failed marriage. She is from a prestigious Samurai family and when she assigns herself the task of looking after his household, he can barely contain his shame.
At the same time a clan war breaks out and it is revealed that Iguchi is pretty bad ass with the short sword when he has to be, and the village elders spot the usefulness of this.
I don't want to go into too much detail about how the story develops but the production looks absolutely fantastic. The period costumes, sets and photography are all impeccable and the acting, particularly from Sanada and the little girl who plays his younger daughter (and the film's narrator) are awesome. This really is like watching classic Kurosawa all over again. I loved it.
PTU
PTU however, was really disappointing. This is from Johnnie To who brought us Fulltime Killer in amongst some real crap like Love on a Diet and My left Eye Sees Ghosts and he has apparently been working on this project for the last two and a half years. The title refers to the Police Tactical Unit in Hong Kong, a division that "is deployed to assist with crowd management and public security duties" - to quote the production notes. The story spans one long night as Sergeant Lo (Lam Suet) loses his gun to a group of triads in a back alley scuffle and spends the rest of the night trying to find it to save his promotion. He enlists the help of Simon Yam's PTU who are beating the streets of the neighbourhood where he lost it and over the course of the evening we are witness to all manner of unorthodox policing methods and in-house corruption.
The film flits from comedy to gang violence to cop thriller and only occasionally manages to be convincing. The film works best as a comedy but from the marketing it seems to be selling itself as a gritty thriller which it simply is not. Lam Suet is admittedly excellent as the bungling overweight Lo, doing all he can to cover up for his mistakes and retrieve his weapon before his superiors find out and To should have stuck to this strand of the story. Instead he brings in too many characters and answers too few of the questions he raises, ending the film with a bloody and clumsy gunfight involving pretty much everybody.
Johnnie To was at the screening and admitted to the audience that one reason the film had taken him so long to make was that he couldn't think of a suitable ending - and unfortunately it transpires that he never did. Infernal Affairs has shown us what today's HK cop movies can be like and in it's wake, PTU weak points become even more exposed.
Hope this has been of interest to you - lots more cool looking movies coming up in the next week or so - I'll keep you updated.
Marshy
