By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Johnnie To
Starring: Crystal Huang | Guo Tao | Lam Suet | Li Jing | Louis Koo | Sun Honglei
Original language title: Du Zhan
Country: china, hong_kong
Year: 2013
Running time: 107
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2165735/combined
Kyle says: “The New York Premiere of DRUG WAR brought out enough fans of the great Hong Kong director Johnnie To to fill the Walter Reade Theater, although more than likely, the combination of drugs, cops, criminals and gun battles proved irresistible to genre mavens. Subway Cinema (Co-producer of the 12th New York Asian Film Festival with the Film Society of Lincoln Center) Co-founder, Board President, and Asian cinema pundit par excellence Grady Hendrix performed a three-minute exegesis of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television’s hegemony over artistic matters. In his rapid-fire delivery, rhythmic perfection, emphasis on all the right words, clarity and conciseness, it became not only a delicious piece of performance art, but also a perfect analogue for countless scenes in HK movies, where the film rhythms whiz by almost as fast as the bullets. The audience burst into appreciative applause for this perfect prelude to DRUG WAR.
“SARFT is of course the censorship board, despite the blandly opaque list of ‘Primary Duties’ that can be accessed in Wikipedia. SARFT is charged by the government with checking for violations of approved Chinese cultural standards, such as no sex and no drugs, no immorality, no pornography no getting away with a life of crime, no denunciations of the government, no content which may ‘undermine social stability’ and absolutely no mention of Tiananmen Square. All of this becomes germane with the realization that DRUG WAR is a profoundly subversive movie, in which the authorities are equally venal and despicable as the
lawbreakers, both groups having sold their souls and engaged in deadly games without winners but plenty of losers. In fact, nothing but losers. How this one ever got past the Chinese censors is a fascinating question.
“A showcase for brilliant film editing by Allen Leung and David M. Richardson, DRUG WAR begins with a downtown car crash whose driver, drug lord Timmy Choi (Louis Koo), has been injured in a crystal meth laboratory explosion. When a bus is apprehended filled with drug mules whose every orifice is filled with cocaine in condoms, crusading cop captain Zhang (Sun Honglei) forces Choi to help him go undercover to capture the drug traffickers. Each antagonist manipulates the other, one willing to do anything to avoid prison, the other eager to do anything to capture the crooks. The climax is a jaw-dropping gun battle at an elementary school during carpool pickups of the children, the denouement an execution by lethal injection as the miscreant frantically but futilely attempts to stop the execution by rattling off names and addresses.
“Here is director Johnnie To in a May 2013Hollywood Reporter’ interview. ‘What was most brain wracking was whether what we’ve done could pass the censors. So we shot two versions ‘ for quite a few scenes, so that if there’s a problem with one cut, we
can just replace it. That anxiety about getting approval from the censors was more stressful than the actual production. But the actual engagement with the censors was not that difficult, as we put much thought about what to put into the film. They said there were too many gunfights, and too many detectives dying; they said nothing like that ever happened in the history of the People’s Republic. So we just trimmed the film along those lines. We thought the final scene, in which a death penalty by lethal injection is shown, wouldn’t get the green light, but that passed. The only thing they objected to was Huang Yi’s character, a policewoman, watching the execution through a one-way mirror. They said this simply couldn’t happen, as there is a distinct
separation between officials upholding the law and acting on it.’
“An anecdotal claim that the actors playing police were from Mainland China, and the actors playing gangsters all had Hong Kong passports, was greeted with much laughter. DRUG WAR is currently the highest grossing crime film ever released in China. 5 cats”
Jason says: “‘Procedural’ gets thrown around like it’s a dirty word when discussing crime dramas, but it needn’t be; in the right hands, it can be a fantastic way to produce taut suspense with the melodrama drained away, while sneakily allowing the cast to create interesting characters without showy theatrics. And as anybody who has been watching genre film for the past couple decades can tell you, Johnnie To has the right hands, with Drug War a fine example of what he can do.
“While Captain Zhang Lei (Sun Honglei) and his team are busting a group of drug smugglers at a Jin Hai toll booth, a crystal meth factory belonging to Timmy Choi (Louis Koo) explodes, leaving him temporarily disoriented enough to crash his car. After an aborted escape attempt, he surrenders to Zhang – and since 50 grams of meth can get you the death sentence in China and he processes it by the ton, it behooves him to start talking.
“And from there, To and a group of four writers (including frequent collaborator Wai Ka-fai) just keep moving on to the next steps in a quickly-mounted sting operation, injecting themselves into meetings with potential distributor Haha (Hao Ping) and drug lords like Bill Li (Li Zhenqi) and his nephew Chang (Tan Kai), through which they discover other targets of opportunity. Unspoken but obvious is that the anti-drug squad’s moves have to be made quickly, lest their targets find out that Timmy is working with them, and this mostly-unspoken circumstance allows To and company to steadily move from one situation to the next without worrying much about transitions or much in the way of subplots. The effect is almost that of a story being played
out in real time, with no moments to step back and regroup, although To and editors Allen Leung & David M. Richardson are able to make sure the audience feels the passage of time as the sun goes down or comes up, or signs of fatigue show up in the characters’ body language.
“The audience isn’t given any background on the characters, but To and the cast make sure who they are in the present moment is always very clear. Sun Honglei, for instance, gives Zhang an unmistakable air of confidence and authority, and Zhang is still unmistakably himself even when imitating another character in an undercover operation. Louis Koo, meanwhile, is cleverly restrained with Timmy’s cowardice – this isn’t a character who snivels, or who won’t try something bold when given the opportunity, but no matter what seemingly-positive move he makes, or what talk there is of ‘redemption’, fear and greed are
driving him, and one just has to squint a little to see it. Aside from him, the crooks are portrayed by a fantastic brace of character actors: Hao Ping gets the biggest chance to play to the balcony as the aptly-named Haha, and he’s fantastic in the part, but Tan Kai is just as memorable as the severe representative of ‘Uncle Bill.’ Guo Tao and Li Jing transform a pair of deaf-mute brothers from gimmick henchmen to serious threats, and a handful and a half of Milkyway regulars pop up in the last act (including Lam Suet playing another character named ‘Fatso’; the guy deserves better nicknames). The cops don’t get to be nearly so colorful a group, but I suspect everyone who watches this will keep an eye out for ‘Crystal’ Huang Yi in the future; her Xiao Hei is as utterly no-nonsense as she is striking, but Huang does well with the little bits of humanity even while establishing this petite detective as the one you should mess with the least.
“The slow, constant build means that there aren’t many big action scenes throughout the first half of the movie; there would be momentary relief and a moment to regroup when they ended, after all. There are some nice teases, though – what momentarily looks like a developing car chase becomes something similarly cool, and scenes will occasionally explode into something surprising. Because of that, the audience is primed when the movie takes a hard turn into action – To gives it just enough time to recognize that things are about to go completely crazy (and look for signs of a double-twist) before the guns come out and the bullets start flying. It’s actually an amazingly well-done piece; by this point, there are a couple dozen identifiable characters in play, and they’re shooting at each other just outside an elementary school. Tension mounts, bullets and blood fly, and some of the moments of release are darkly humorous indeed.
“The skill of To and his Milkyway production crew becomes most evident in that sequence; Cheng Siu-keung’s camerawork is precise and as sharp as it has been throughout the movie (although the shots with what I presume is Choi’s meth factory in the background have a haunted look to them). Sound is used brilliantly, with the chatter of children appearing at just the right times to make things a little more tense. It’s a slick, well-produced movie, though never too glossy or stylized. And while this is To’s first crime movie produced in mainland China (he’d already done a romantic comedy there), he and the rest of his crew prove surprisingly adept at handling the censors’ dictates – it doesn’t feel that different from his Hong Kong work.
“And who would want it to be different? To is good at this sort of thing, whether he does it in Hong Kong, Macau, or the People’s Republic. DRUG WAR isn’t overly fancy, but it certainly gets the job done. 4.5 cats
“Seen 19 July 2013 dans le Cinéma Impérial (Fantasia Festival Opening Night, HD)