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Tsui Hark
Shangai Blues (1984)
Peking Opera Blues (1986)
Wong Fei-hung/ Once Upon a Time in China (1991)
Time And Tide (2000) is a tour de force of experimental cuts, camera
angles and close-ups performed at a relentless, almost manic, pace.
Hark summarizes a century of action movie, from silent slapsticks to
Hitchcock's North By Northwest, from kungfu films
to Wong's Chungking Express, sets them against a degraded urban
background and wraps them in psychedelic colors.
The flying camera and the spastic rhythm are disorienting, to say the least.
Schizoid flashbacks show what is flashing through the protagonist's head,
while hysterical camera movements confuse even the present.
Action overload is augmented with extreme lighting contrasts
(shade-light-shade-...).
The speed increases as the film goes on. The pace in the second half of the
film is simply epileptic. Scenes flash by faster and faster, often
reduced to just a stain of colors. The first part of the film was just
wandering aroung the streets of Hong Kong, while the second part has three
epic battlefields: the apartment building, the train station and the
stadium. Each one is used to maximum effect.
The last scenes are the equivalent of ten Hitchcock movies in one.
Obviously the plot is not very credible.
Tyler falls in love with the woman who slept with him without even knowing
his name and who turns out to be a police officer and even a lesbian.
Tyler and Jack risk their lives to cheat gangsters.
But the plot is only a pretext for extreme tension and fast pace.
And, in a way, even this crazy plot well represents the craziness of
urban life.
Hark mixes some comedy in the action, possibly to let the viewer know that
this is just a gigantic joke.
The protagonist, Tyler, a young man in Hong Kong, thinks of the Creation.
A bartender, he meets a slutty girl, Jo, who is looking for drugs. He gives her
ice instead and they argue. They challenge each other at drinking alcohol,
then, outside, they throw up.
In the morning the two are sleeping at Tyler's house. While she's in the
bathroom, Tyler looks up her wallet and finds out she's a police officer.
She is furious that they made love (although neither remembers if they
actually did or not).
Nine months later she's pregnant and about to have a baby. The problem is
not only the unwanted pregnancy, but also that she is a lesbian. She slept
with him only to find out about drugs. Tyler has been hit by her jealous lover,
another lesbian police officer.
To make some money,
Tyler takes a job with Uncle Ji, the head of an unofficial bodyguard service.
The first assignment is to protect a fat rich woman who probably just wants
some company and specifically asks to ride in Tyler's car. Tyler gets rid
of her by driving backwards at very high speed all the way to the airport.
At the airport he is fascinated by the brochure of an exotic place.
Tyler is working for Jo's baby: all the money he makes, he slips it under
her apartment's door. He doesn't know that the dog eats it up.
A flashback shows Tyler's previous life. He was working as a cashier for a
drug gang somewhere in Latin America. One rainy night a squad in military
uniforms came to bring some money and Tyler's gang ambushed them. In the
shootout Tyler personally killed one of the men and watched the leader
blow up on a bed of grenades.
Ji's new assignment is to protect the birthday party of a boss of the
local mafia. Ji's men, including Tyler, are spread around the elegant
hall. One of Ji's men finds a member of another gang who is obviously
planning to shoot their customer, and tortures him to learn about his
accomplice. Ji's men are using walkie-talkies to communicate. Ji is
informed that the hitman is camouflaged as a waiter and informs all the men
on the floor. Tyler thinks he found a suspicious waiter, but it turns out
to be an innocent. In the meantime, the birthday party reaches its peak,
when the old man calls his children to the stage and estranged daughter
Hui joins them. Hui has married a man from Taiwan, Jack, whom the father
does not welcome (even refuses his birthday present). Hui is also
pregnant. Ji's man in the back is still torturing his victim and sends new
instructions. It turns out Jack and Tyler know each other from the drug days
and Jack alers Tyler of the strange movements of another waiter, who is
in fact the hitman. Tyler chases him down the corridors of the building
and stops him just in time. They fight in the basement until Ji arrives
and, not believing Tyler's story, gives him a warning.
Tyler gives Jack and Hui a ride. That night Jo finds another roll of banknotes
under the door of her apartment, except this time she gagged the dog.
Tyler and Jo argue in a supermarket. She doesn't want his money and does not
want to admit the baby is his. Hui is also there and complicates things.
Tyler and Jack discuss business. They both need money for their babies.
Jack is involved in drug deals for a a psychotic gangster
with an American accent who speaks in english and calls everybody
"cockroach" (and calls Jack Juan).
The psycho asks Jack to kill his rival. Jack accepts and takes position
with a gun. Ji has been hired to protect the rival, and Tyler is with him.
After Jack shoots, a frantic chase follows in the nearby mall. Tyler catches
him and Jack/Juan hits him. Jack/Juan leaves the mall while a pack of men
are looking for him everywhere and steals the car with the money. Now a
frantic car chase begins in the multilevel parking structure, and, again,
Jack/Juan manages to escape. Eventually he simply jumps from the building
into the freeway hanging on a firehose.
The police arrest Ji and his men and suspect of Tyler, but Tyler does not
cooperate. Jo tries to bail him out. Released, Tyler is captured by Ji who
locks him in a truck's trailer and wants to hear the truth. Tyler gives him
a story and gets out of it.
Jack/Juan finds his wife at the hospital and tells her not to go back to their
apartment and to find shelter at her father's mansion.
Jack gives Hui the key to a locker in
the train station, where the bag with the money is hidden.
First thing, Tyler drops some money again at Jo's apartment, but this time
the landlord opens the door and tells him that she's in labor at the hospital.
The action moves to a vast, shabby apartment building. The psycho's men are
ready to shoot at Jack and Hui's apartment. They are just waiting for their
target (Jack betrayed them by running away with the money).
They are using high-tech devices and, again, lots of walkie-talkies.
Tyler breaks into Jack's apartment. The gangster see him and can shoot him
any time. But they miss him. He runs and is chased around the building.
He survives one fight after another. Tyler left the gas running in the
apartment. Jack/Juan comes to his rescue with his guerrilla tactic of
shoot and run. Eventually the gangsters corner Tyler into the apartment
and the apartment blows up while Tyler is hidden in the refrigerator.
Hui, getting close to her own labor, sees the explosion from a taxi and asks
to be taken to the train station.
Both Tyler and Juan manage to escape before the police arrive. So do the
gangsters who are after them. They all converge on the station, where Hui
is already opening the locker.
Tyler is the first to reach her: now he wants the money to end the shooting,
but Hui does not want to give it to him. Then she drops to the floor with
terrible pain while the gangsters are ready to shoot them. The police
evacuates the station and surrounds the building. Jack/Juan is already
inside, ready like a Rambo and agile like a kungfu hero.
Both the gangsters and the police are using walkie talkies all the time.
Tyler tells the police that Hui is having a child and the police chief
orders to save the woman, but, of course, the gangsters do not cooperate.
So Tyler has to drag Hui and the bag to the basement and hide, while
Jack/Juan engages the gangsters and the police raids the building using
tear gas. The men move like shadows in the darkness.
Jack/Juan manages to flee thanks to a train that is entering the station
by mistake, but is arrested by the police chief.
Tyler, following a tunnel, has found shelter in a room under the stadium
and is helping Hui give birth.
The gangsters arrive at the stadium. The police chief is afraid they will
hurt the crowd and gives Jack a gun so he can help. Jack finds the psycho
who eventually blows up in his own booby trap.
Tyler just got the baby out of Hui's body that a gangster attacks them.
Tyler and Hui somehow manage to get rid of the gangster and save the baby.
Now that the gangsters have all been killed or arrested,
the police chief gives Jack three minutes to run away. Jack chooses to
hug hif wife first.
Tyler, also released, visits his own baby at the hospital and thinks again
about the Creation: the most important part of the Creation was the creation
of hope.
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