TO LIVE AND DIE IN MONGKOK Review
Wong Jing's latest effort is a bizarre gangster comedy that flirts with also being a psychological thriller, before settling into more comfortable triad territory. Nick Cheung plays Fai, a triad hitman coming to the end of a 30-year stretch in the big house for slaughtering 20 rival gang members in a street fight. Upon release, Fai and his trusty sidekick Little Fai, return to their old stomping ground of Mongkok only to discover that the entire district been renovated and rejuvenated beyond recognition, and his old gang are eagerly awaiting his help to settle a territory dispute.
There are a number of different characters and plot strands thrown into the mix, all circling around Fai in one way or another. Mainland hooker Pamela (Monica Mok) is desperate to get rid of her violent and overbearing regular, an uncouth gangster named Porky (Wai Ka Hung), who happens to Fai's childhood friend. Porky is waiting on the delivery of a new girl Penny (Natalie Meng Yao), who transpires to be Pamela's mentally ill younger sister, blissfully unaware of the predicament she has just walked into. Pamela's pimp, Johnny (Wong Jing) is powerless against Porky, so Pamela quickly turns to Fai for help, which together with his reluctance to get involved with Porky's gangland problems, serves to further fray the relationship between the two men. There is also a cop, Detective Yu (Liu Kai Chi) sniffing around, who was responsible for putting Fai away.
However, all is not as it seems. Reserved, timid and unassuming, it is difficult to picture Fai as a killer and it soon becomes evident that mentally, he may be a few cans short of a six-pack. Funny one minute, all-out-crazy the next, there is clearly something not quite right with Fai that goes far beyond a touch of institutionalization. What is all the more baffling is the fact that nobody else mentions his erratic behaviour and the longer it goes unchecked, the more the film begins to suffer from it. For the first half of the film the story seems awkward as the other characters tiptoe around an increasingly obvious "big reveal." Once it is out - and wisely Wong does so at about the halfway point - the surrounding characters are finally allowed to react to it and deal with its repercussions and the entire film suddenly finds its feet and begins to pull its numerous narrative threads together smartly.
Co-directed by acclaimed cinematographer Chung Siu Hung, there are some rather inventive visual flourishes, including split screens and sequences of rotorscoping, but arguably they add little of value to the finished product other than more pieces to add to the melee. But that is not to say that TO LIVE AND DIE IN MONGKOK is a bad film, just a messy and uneven one. There are a number of interesting stories, coupled with some strongly defined characters, but before the pivotal reveal, the film fails to find a comfortable balance, until it is arguably too late.
Unfortunately Nick Cheung, whose career is certainly in its ascendancy, puts in a performance that is all over the place, and it's difficult to judge from moment to moment whether he was being funny, effeminate, or just plain crazy. While indisputably a fine actor, this perhaps highlights his limitations, not only as a comedic performer, but also as a bona fide leading man. He lacks the required screen presence necessary to carry a film on his own and may be better served continuing to work as a character player in ensemble pieces. Monica Mok, on the other hand, does a fairly convincing job as the likeable Mainland hooker Pamela. She certainly looks the part and brings enough to an admittedly fairly one-note role to forge something fairly memorable from it.
More frustrating than anything else, however, is a notable onscreen lamentation that Hong Kong audiences are no longer interested in going to see local movies. The film quite clearly suggests that it is the audiences' and exhibitors' fault for not supporting locally made product, rather than suggest the industry's dwindling profit margin might be attributed to poorly written and directed films, serving as little more than pre-packaged publicity opportunities for pop stars and product placement.
TO LIVE AND DIE IN MONGKOK is that rare thing, a film that gets better as it goes along, but even in its best moments it is no more than adequate and goes some way to answering its own questions concerning the struggling local industry. Why don't people in Hong Kong watch local movies anymore? It's exactly because the industry churns out movies like this: poorly organized, haphazardly executed and reliant solely on a marketable lead actor, who in this case, turns out to be rather out of his depth, or a director that people continue to support solely because of his past successes, rather than anything he has produced recently.
cross published in bc Magazine (Hong Kong)
