I had never been a great fan of HK cinema, although I do have the whole body of works from Wong Kar-wai, counting In the Mood of Love one of my favourite films, and regarding Tong Leung and Maggie Cheung two of the great actors. When a HK neighbour lent me nearly 100 HK films in one go prior to her one month holiday in her native HK, I was not overtly enthusiastic.
I do like Lau Ching-wan a lot after his My Name Is Fame and that was what spurred me to figure out which ones to watch first. Typical of HK cinema though, most of the projects he was involved in are commercial ones with half-baked scripts and directed by those who are more keen to exploit the mass market than to explore the social or psychological aspects of stories or protagonists. Even with Lau on, I found, at times, I was pressing fast-forward mode on the remote control.
Disappointment was however not the only harvest last week when I took one week off for my beloved media of entertainment. Along the way, I was happily surprised and found other great actors and interesting directors. If I was asked now, my new favourite would be Francis Ng, who bears striking resemblance to the late German actor Ulrich Muhe both in appearance and in his intensive way of looking - the way that really grips your heart and made you follow him at all times.
I had watched him on some HK dramas before, but somehow, I had been unimpressed. I was however converted whole-heartedly when watching Bullets over Summer, a seemingly just another one in the action/cop genre, the favourite genre in HK. Checking on the Internet, I realise now that he was by then, 1999, 38 years old and had worked as an film actor for eight years after some six years on the small screen. He looked totally fresh and entirely relaxed in his role of a small time cop who just wanted to committed to whatever his task and at the meanwhile wishing for a family of his own having been an orphan himself. In fact Ng was so good at this head strong character with a secret human and fragile inside that I found myself sorry for his character and wished him a happy ending wherein he could help raise another man's child with an abandoned young woman. Here Ng was the embodiment of understated performance that HK actors excel at. He did not act, he became the character, like Ulrich Muhe in The Lives of Others.
I was really glad and even relieved when I watched Infernal Affairs II to find him allocated a role as the then head of the underworld. If Infernal Affairs series can be taken as who-is-who in HK cinema, then this role, my wishful thinking was, testifies that Ng's screen presence has been widely accepted as one of the great ones not to be missed. Ng didn't let me down in it. Indeed, with a pair of spectacle on, he could easily be thought to be an intellectual - and hence brought out the amazing side of Ng - that he can also excel at roles rather than those run of the mill genre films such as cop-gangster ones.
As to directors, I found Johnnie To to be one to look out for and his The Mission reminded me of Chinatown and French Connection, the no nonsense action genre films that are austere, simple and stylish. Francis Ng looked his best when he was this intense gangster turned bodyguard who had his own principles and committed to his mission whatever it was.
Also in this film is Anthony Wong, another extremely prolific and versatile actor. Unlike Lau Ching-wan and Francis Ng who seem to be, despite their success, the victims of some level of stereotype casting (Lau usually playing the types who are resourceful and would go the extra miles to get things done, but at the meanwhile, easily bordering between good and evil, black and white while Ng more on the harder and darker side of characters), Wong seems to have better luck than both of them in that his roles are always more varied than the combination of both of them.
Overall, I find HK cinema to be in healthy state - there are directors who are constantly looking out for new ways of engaging the audience and actors who are really into their roles whatever they are. I have one wish though - that in not too far a future, there will be more actors like Maggie Cheung who can afford to take a break and look out for quality roles. It is a huge waste to see even the greatest actors in HK cinema seem to be committed to such suicidally heavy workload.
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