TIFF 09: ACCIDENT Review

ACCIDENT is a carefully assembled, effectively executed and quietly successful little film that manages to mostly silence the concerns over its lengthy gestation period and emerge as one of the more interesting Hong Kong films of this year.

The Brain (Louis Koo) is a professional assassin who stages elaborate accidents to conceal his crimes. He has a small, loyal team of accomplices and his obsessive, meticulous planning has earned him a tidy stash. However, when a job goes awry and a teammate is killed, The Brain begins to suspect that his identity has been compromised and that he too is falling foul of an elaborate and potentially deadly ruse.

Unlike most Hong Kong thrillers, ACCIDENT contains no gunplay or martial arts and precious little bloody violence. There is some broken glass that needs to be avoided and an occasional out-of-control vehicle, but for the most part, ACCIDENT is an exercise in slow-burning tension and teasing paranoia.

Louis Koo, who is in almost every scene of the film, is understated yet quietly captivating as he engineers a series of intricate Heath Robinson-esque executions. His accidents always occur in public places, always in plain sight of numerous eyewitnesses. He is cold and calculating, but when it appears someone is targeting him in a similar fashion, he takes it as a personal affront while further underpinning what he knows only too well - that "any accident can be staged" and nobody can be trusted.

There is no camaraderie here as we might normally expect in Johnnie To's criminal underworld. The Brain's associates, played by Lam Suet, Michelle Ye and Feng Shui Fan, don't even have names and their attempts to build any kind of personal relationship with him are completely stonewalled. There are hints that Ye's character in particular is vying for his affections, but that would require a degree of trust we soon learn is way beyond his means. In the second half of the film, The Brain locks on to Richie Ren, the man he believes to be his nemesis. He observes, obsesses and eavesdrops, but always through windows, lenses or walls - building a relationship on terms he is able to handle.

While it must be acknowledged that director Cheang Pou-Soi and producer Johnnie To have been tinkering with ACCIDENT for a very long time, what results is genuinely intriguing. As a viewer you are never entirely sure where the film is going to take you and events play out far less predictably than other recent films that have explored similar territory, such as OVERHEARD or EYE IN THE SKY.

The first half is a tense thriller featuring a couple of excellently constructed set pieces, while the second half evolves into something else entirely. Although the story plays out very much in the heart of the city, central Hong Kong here feels like a mouldy, decaying and totally impersonal environment. With the exception of one or two buildings, the locations are unrecognizable and the audience never has a clear idea where they are or what lies ahead.

There are a couple of slight narrative missteps along the way - one of The Brain's accidents relies on direct sunlight, but coincides exactly with a solar eclipse that he was seemingly unaware of.  It also strains plausibility to accept that a man mindful enough to remove cigarette butts from a busy street would happily scrawl plans and diagrams across the walls of his newly rented apartment. But for the most part, the story is engaging and engrossing.

The extra time spent in the editing room appears to have paid off and what emerges, while not a masterpiece, is far from the disaster that some had feared. ACCIDENT is both intelligent and entertaining, without descending into the kind of panicked, reworked finale that afflicts so many Hong Kong films of late. Cheang has delivered a mainstream thriller with art-house sensibilities that offers a far more satisfying and thoughtful experience than the likes of VENGEANCE, MURDERER or OVERHEARD. And that, rest assured, was no accident.