Plot
A drug cartel boss who is arrested in a raid is coerced into betraying his former accomplices as part of an undercover operation.
Release Year: 2012
Rating: 6.9/10 (1,100 voted)
Director:Johnnie To
Storyline
After losing control of his car and crashing into a local restaurant, a man loses consciousness on the street. Later, while working on a case, the police's anti-drug division captain, Zhang Lei (Honglei Sun), realizes that the man in the crash is drug lord Tian Ming (Louis Koo). In order to avoid the death penalty, Tian Ming helps the police put a stop to the entire drug trafficking circuit, but just as soon as the police are ready to make a large bust, Tian Ming makes a decision that shocks everyone involved.
For the uninitiated, 'Drug War' marks acclaimed Hong Kong director
Johnnie To's first crime thriller to be shot in Mainland China, an
understandably wary prospect considering how his usual sensibilities in
the genre are highly likely to run afoul of the Chinese censors. But
fans of the auteur can rest easy To is as sharp as he has ever been
here reuniting with his regular screenwriter and producer Wai Kar-Fai,
delivering a tense and engrossing procedural around a complex anti-drug
trafficking police operation.
To be sure, the subject matter is an extremely risky one after all,
the tough stance that the country has adopted towards drugs means that
the authorities are only going to scrutinise a movie about that hot-
button topic very, very closely. It is therefore somewhat of a miracle
that To manages to remain politically correct without ever being
preachy, and even better, to mirror the authorities' no-nonsense
approach while offering the kind of nail-biting entertainment perfectly
accessible to mainstream audiences.
But then again, we should have expected no less from To, and right from
the get-go, we are treated to both Wai Kar-Fai's elegant storytelling
and To's classy direction. Cross-cutting seamlessly between two
seemingly unrelated series of events, To introduces his audience to
Louis Koo's Timmy Choi, who is seen driving away from a factory
billowing in smoke while foaming at the mouth, gradually losing
consciousness until finally he crashes in spectacular fashion through
the glass walls of a restaurant. Meanwhile, Sun Honglei's Zhang is on a
dilapidated bus going through a toll booth, whose commuters are really
mules transporting drug-packed ovules within their body.
When his partner-in-crime panics after their overheated bus pulls to
the side just after crossing the booth, Zhang reveals himself to be no
less than the very captain of the narcotics squad. At the same hospital
where Zhang and the other drug mules painfully excrete their smuggled
goods, Zhang runs into an unconscious Choi, covered in skin lesions and
bearing the unmistakable whiff of a drug-making operation. Immediately,
Choi is put into surveillance, but Choi's identity only becomes clearer
when he is brought into questioning, turning surprisingly compliant as
he tells Zhang that he is but a middleman between a rich businessman
turned drug dealer Boss HaHa (Hao Ping) and a powerful supplier named
Uncle Bill.
Even then, Choi remains an enigma we're sceptical of his plea to
escape the death penalty in exchange for his cooperation and yet a
cautious alliance emerges between the tough grim-faced Zhang and the
persuasively suppliant Choi. Keeping the proceedings entirely
realistic, To unspools the action through a series of undercover
infiltrations, surveillance and stake-outs filmed with the same
breakneck urgency and unnerving tension of such real-life operations.
Moving from posh hotels to lavish cabaret nightclubs to busy seaports,
To switches from location to location without any let-up from a
consistently gripping pace.
Yet despite the breakneck pace, each sequence is tautly choreographed.
Particularly effective is the pivotal setpiece in the middle section,
which sees Zhang masquerading first as Uncle Bill to meet Brother HaHa
and then posing as HaHa (the character's signature hysterical laugh
included) to meet Uncle Bill's representative. Both close-quarter
setups ripple with edge-of-your-seat tension, with Zhang's charade
threatening to unravel itself under the villains' scrutiny. Also worthy
of mention is the film's climactic shootout in front of an elementary
school, as Choi finally reveals his hand as a cool-blooded conniver
interested only in his own self-preservation. Though less violent than
the usual To actioners, the action is nevertheless exhilarating in its
rawness, with To subverting genre expectations of who dies and who
prevails.
In true alpha-male fashion, Zhang remains an inscrutable character
throughout, defined only by his doggedness when hunting down his
targets. Ditto for Choi, who doesn't get any backstory to explain how
or why he got into the drug business. Like 'PTU', To keeps his focus
singularly on the nuts-and-bolts of the police work at hand,
deliberately refusing to let his audience get to know more about any of
the characters aside from their relative positions in the unfolding
mission. Such a clinical approach may frustrate some viewers, but
anyone who's been a fan of his trademark understatement will embrace it
along with Xavier Jameux's pulsing score as nothing less than To's
brand of cool.
Just as certain to delight fans is a nifty twist late into the story
that turns the movie into a reunion of sorts for To's regulars Lam
Suet, Gordon Lam, Eddie Cheung, Lo Hoi Pang and Michelle Ye. Of course,
that's not to diminish Sun Honglei and Louis Koo's strong lead
performances the former bringing gravitas and an unexpected touch of
humour when imitating HaHa's over-the-top behaviour to an otherwise
stoic role; and the latter playing both cunning and desperate in
thoroughly engaging fashion.
And so despite the Mainland setting, 'Drug War' remains a distinctly
Johnnie To movie, using the bleak wintry settings of the Mainland city
of Tianjin to lend the film and its subject matter a gritty sobering
feel. Eschewing the visual aesthetics of 'Exiled' and 'Sparrow', it is
also easily his most commercially accessible action thriller of late,
with a documentary-like realism that mirrors Derek Yee's style in
another drug-themed movie 'Protége'. Like we've said, To's fans will
enjoy this as much as his previous works, and this is a movie that
demonstrates once again why he is easily one of the best directors in
Hong Kong today.
0