SONS OF THE NEON NIGHT Review: Juno Mak's Long-Gestating Hong Kong Crime Epic Is all Surface, No Feeling

Visually striking yet narratively incoherent, Juno Mak’s ambitiously staged yet lethargically paced Hong Kong crime saga Sons of the Neon Night finally arrives on home shores, more than a decade after the project was originally announced. 

 

Takeshi Kaneshiro and Lau Ching-wan headline an impressive ensemble of onscreen talent, while the likes of editor William Chang and the late composer Ryuichi Sakamoto ensure below-the-line credits are equally enviable. Unfolding in a fantastical snow-drenched version of Hong Kong, circa 1994, the story involves a violent struggle for control of the city’s drug trade that erupts in the wake of a kingpin’s murder. 

 

Relatives, cops, hitmen, and a sea of enigmatic pretenders look to either shore up their positions, or usurp one another’s for personal gain, but in almost every case, these fiercely introspective players must wrestle with their own internal torments as fervently as with their rivals on the streets. 

 

Sons of the Neon Night was first announced at Hong Kong Filmart, back in March 2015, and went into production two years later, only to face a gauntlet of obstacles on its way to the screen, including a ballooning budget, scheduling conflicts, and the coronavirus pandemic. By the time the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the budget was reported to have exceeded HK$400 million (US$51 million), making it Hong Kong’s most expensive film ever.

 

For all its misgivings and shortcomings, nobody will be questioning where that money has gone. Mak, who is also credited as the film’s production designer, has created an astonishing, otherworldly vision of Hong Kong that exists just this side of total fantasy. Beyond the neon-drenched skyscrapers and garbage-strewn back alleys, his characters exist in a world more reminiscent of a faux-industrial artisanal coffee house, furnished with beautifully crafted mahogany furniture beneath exposed wrought-iron water pipes and air ducts. 

 

In the opening scene, Moreton Li (Kaneshiro), heir to his father’s criminal empire, awakens in a giant bed wrapped in black silk sheets, that sits in the middle of a huge, seemingly disused cross-harbour motorway tunnel. The intertwined roots of a ancient banyan tree snake through an opening on one side, while a solitary door on the opposing wall leads to a spacious, glass-roofed courtyard where coffee sits filtering through an elaborate test tube contraption. 

 

It is an introduction that grabs the attention immediately, promising a vision of old Hong Kong - or is it the future? - that exists beyond the borders of reality. This is quickly followed by the film’s headline-grabbing set-piece - a blistering high-powered shootout on the streets of Causeway Bay, between Hong Kong's finest - led by corrupt Detective Wong (Lau) - and a gang of masked terrorists intent on causing little more than absolute carnage in one of the city’s busiest shopping districts. 

 

The dust - or snow, rather - has barely settled when a shifty, shaven-headed man (played by Mak himself) shuffles into a bustling hospital, where we have just been informed that the city's ailing kingpin has been admitted. Muttering an indecipherable mantra, the man proceeds to blow himself - and the entire hospital - sky high, throwing all of Hong Kong into chaos. 

 

Twenty minutes into Sons of the Neon Night, audiences will be forgived for believing that they are witnessing the most innovative and groundbreaking crime thriller to emerge from Hong Kong in decades. However, wait a few minutes longer and all that kinetic energy and visual ingenuity has been replaced by a dour, sluggish melodrama in which cripplingly introspective criminals ponder their inevitable condemnation in a series of immaculately staged yet achingly dull set-pieces.

 

That is not to say that the action is all over. Peppered throughout the film’s challenging 125-minute runtime are a number of expertly executed action beats. A gang of long bow-wielding assassins lay siege to a mountain top drug depot in a sequence that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Ridley Scott movie; later, a squad of heavily-armed cops bust a Chungking Mansions stash house, in a shoot-out that is incapable of hiding its infatuation with The Raid. But these moments prove few and far between in a film more interested in emulating the work of Wong Kar-wai than John Woo. Has there been another gangster flick where nobody ever lost their temper or even raised their voice at one another?

 

Evidence of the film’s epic gestation period are littered throughout. Beyond simply how young everybody looks, are the insignificant roles meted out to performers like Michelle Wai, who has blossomed into a major star in the interim, but here plays an all-but-anonymous member of Wong's police squad. This proves significant elsewhere, as the fragmented narrative and meandering structure have prioritised screen time for its huge ensemble over shaping a coherent plot.

 

Moreton appears to rule with a level head, but is unbalanced by the persistent rumour that his volatile elder brother Maddox (Alex To) is returning to stake his claim on the family business. Wong is desperate to ensure that his dealings with the Li family remain undisturbed by the change in leadership, although he is unsettled by the revelation that the hospital bomber was his undercover mole.

 

Elsewhere, Tony Leung Ka-fai plays a duplicitous veteran cop who harbours a tragic history and now operates in service of both the police and the Li family. Louis Koo’s enigmatic hitman Ching is hoping to get out of the game, only to be dragged back in by the promise of one last job, and his commitment to his young protege, Yip (Jiang Pei-yao). Moreton’s wife Siyan (Gao Yuan Yuan) also becomes more embroiled in the unspooling drama than either of them would have preferred. 

 

Sadly a number of these narrative strands are left unresolved, less plot holes in the finished film than dead ends, abandoned by the necessity of leaving much of the footage shot on the editing room floor. Rumours persist of an initial seven-hour director’s cut that might be better suited to a limited series format on a streaming service, which may yet materialise at some future juncture.

 

Similarly, the 1994 setting feels like an afterthought, or more likely an obligation in order to appease Hong Kong’s increasingly vigorous censors, not least considering the prevalence of contemporary smartphones, weapons, vehicles and the like. Recent years have seen a wave of crime dramas from the mainland set in fictional South East Asian countries, where characters can plausibly speak Mandarin, yet exist beyond the reach of the Chinese authorities. Similarly, Hong Kong crime films made in the past few years are now invariably set prior to the 1997 handover, when the city was a lawless hive of scum and villainy under the corrupt and carefree governance of the evil British Empire. 

 

In contrast to a film like Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, a film that struggles to contain its creator’s boundless vision, Sons of the Neon Night emerges as a singular and precisely crafted work from an artist of obvious talent, but whose skills as a filmmaker remain as yet unhoned. Ultimately, Juno Mak’s passion project stands as a beautiful feat of design and staging that boasts undeniable poise and potential, but remarkably little passion.