One of my favorite Hong Kong films is a little-remembered biopic from 1991 starring Andy Lau as the eponymous Lee Rock, a police cadet who joins the force solely for the purpose of being able to buy food. Initially righteous and morally upstanding, he refuses bribes and chastises his colleagues for accepting them. As Lee Rock climbs up the ranks, however, his attitude changes, and by the time the sequel rolls around, he is paying off gang leaders and divising an official system of  dividing bribes up amongst officers and detectives. The end of Lee Rock II sees Andy Lau’s character fleeing to Canada to avoid prosecution at the hands of the ICAC – The Independent Commission Against Corruption. It’s hard to discern how much of the Lee Rock saga is fictionalized (a question we have to take a hard look at with any biopic), but according to Hong Kong gweilo film critic Paul Fonoroff, the films are at least partly rooted in fact, similar to Casino Tycoon, another Andy Lau biopic made in 1992 about Macau gambling tycoon Stanley Ho. Actually, the two film franchises are eerily similar to each other in terms of plot structure, but that’s a discussion for another time. Prolific filmmaker Wong Jing produced Lee Rock (as well as directed Casino Tycoon), and in 2009, he decided to revisit the subject of corrupt policemen – as well as the ICAC, which only gets brief screentime in Lee Rock II – for I Corrupt All Cops, which also crafts a lot of fiction around a little bit of fact.

The film suffers from the same problem many Wong Jing films struggle with: a lack of focus. ICAC spends the first half of it’s 2+ hour running time setting up numerous subplots and developing the characters within them, but it seems readily apparent that Wong Jing is unsure of who to devote screentime to. Anthony Wong’s character is established in the first scene…then he disappears in favor of focusing on corrupt head police officials Lak (Tony Leung Ka-Fai), Gale (Eason Chan), and Gold (Wong Jing himself). By the time Anthony Wong comes back into the fold, it’s hard to remember what he was doing at the beginning and what purpose he serves the story now. Perhaps even more puzzling is the inclusion of an extensive backstory for Alex Fong’s character at the beginning of the film. Bong (Fong) is an upstanding student at the University of Hong Kong who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, getting the shit beaten out of him by Anthony Wong and other police officers in order to extract a confession for crimes he had no part in. Bong is eventually released rightfully scotch-free, but he warns the officers that “one day, I’m going to put you all behind bars.” Anyone who has seen a film before will realize that this is blatant foreshadowing, and sure enough, in the second act of the film Bong applies as an investigator for the newly-established ICAC. Yet, in this capacity, he only acts as scenery, and his character has no effect on the story whatsoever. He barely even has any lines while investigating corrupt police officers and flashing his ICAC badge. Also, he ends up working with Anthony Wong in the ICAC. What happened to vengeance?

Oh shit, it’s the ICAC!

Thankfully, Wong Jing manages to restrain himself, and avoids putting in odd comic sequences that detract from the film’s serious tone. Still, there is one decidedly major subplot that is patently ridiciulous, even though it isn’t played for laughs. Gale acts as Lak’s right-hand man, and ends up taking the fall for Lak and company’s infidelity on more than one occasion – nine occasions, to be exact. Gale marries all of his colleague’s mistresses once they’ve been exposed, and by the time of the film’s narrative, he has nine wives. It’s an interesting and fun idea, but it’s nonsensical nature is highlighted all-the-more when seen in between plausible segments. At least it leads to someone getting a hammer to the face…

Eight of Gale’s nine wives.

Even though the film derives it’s name from the ICAC (I hope you’ve figured that out by now), there is a disappointingly small amount of screentime devoted to the organization itself. Besides the required montage of the team busting into police official’s houses and flashing their badges, very little of the narrative focuses on the ICAC. Maybe it was too dry for Wong Jing’s a-thrill-a-minute approach? I would have gladly taken more dramatization of the ICAC’s actual history over the painfully unnecessary and overly-drawn-out explanation of the murder of a dog. The problem is that over half of the film is spent on exposition. By the time the “action” of the story hits, it’s already time to wrap things up. Since the ICAC obviously isn’t around for the first part of the film, completing its story arch doesn’t seem to be much of a priority, and thus much of the ICAC story ended up on the cutting room floor. It’s a travesty for those who are interested in the factual background of Hong Kong’s struggle with police corruption. If you are willing to overlook the lack of attention payed to the ICAC, however, I Corrupt All Cops is an engaging and entertaining piece of cinema, especially when compared with much of Wong Jing’s other work. Perhaps we’ll just have to wait another decade or so for another stab at documenting the real story of the ICAC.

Anthony Wong and Herman Yau, the dream team behind such exploitation classics as Ebola Syndrome and The Untold Story, teamed up before both of those movies to make Taxi Hunter. While one could still file “Taxi Hunter” under the exploitation label, it’s not nearly as tasteless and grotesque as Wong and Yau’s later efforts.

Wong plays an average insurance salesman who seems to be living a great life: He is moving up the corporate ladder in his career and also has a good wife who is soon to give birth to his child. Things aren’t bad. That is, unless there is a taxi around. Evidentially, Wong’s picture perfect life frequently gets disrupted by Hong Kong taxi drivers, who are apparently the scum of the earth. One such driver swerves in front of Wong and abruptly breaks to pick up some passengers. Wong rear-ends the taxi, and the driver promptly bullies him (with help from other taxi drivers) into paying a large sum of money for pettily damages.

However, this isn’t enough to upset Wong, so he shrugs it off and goes home. After his wife goes into labor, he calls a cab, which promptly ditches him in favor of a higher fare. Wong stops the next taxi, but that driver too refuses to take his wife, as he doesn’t want blood all over the seats. Unfortunately, this driver closes the rear passenger door with part of Wong’s wife’s dress caught in it, so she gets dragged down the street and eventually dies because of this.

Since Wong is an average white collar guy, he copes with his grief by crying and getting an extended vacation from work. While eating outside, Wong notices a taxi driver attempting to extort extra money from a passenger. Upset, he walks across the street and, in what is perhaps the film’s funniest moment, impulsively punches the taxi driver in the face, prompting applause from the surrounding crowd. Later that evening, Wong gets drunk with his brother-in-law (who happens to be a cop) and takes a taxi home alone. Wong is harassed by the driver, who he eventually strangles with a seatbelt buckle. Thus begins a murderous rampage on taxis and the people who drive them.

While the premise sounds rather nihilistic, the film shies away from violence in all but a few scenes, which may put off fans of Wong and Yau’s later collaborations. The film’s exposition takes up the first forty minutes of the running time, during which little happens (apart from an opening action sequence). Not to say Taxi Hunter is a bad film; it’s decent entertainment, just don’t expect a bloodbath. The only complaint I have is that Man Tat Ng (sans Stephen Chow) plays a cop, and it’s quite obvious that the film tries to play him for laughs. The juxtaposition between his bumbling character and the grave seriousness of the rest of the film doesn’t quite work out, which ruins the atmosphere at points. Still, Taxi Hunter is an above-average offering from the exploitation genre, which may be well-suited for those who couldn’t stomach The Untold Story or Ebola Syndrome.

Two years before Poltergeist III came out, Hong Kong made their own film about a haunted skyscraper entitled The Ghost Snatchers. While The Ghost Snatchers was not directed by Wong Jing, the prolific (and often hated) filmmaker wrote the script and stars as one of the principal protagonists; his trademark irreverence is also reflected heavily in the film’s story and narrative structure. And really, I will tell you up front that this is not a quality film. As far as storytelling is concerned, the script falters in the typical Wong Jing way; every character is unashamedly one-dimensional and tangential subplots randomly manifest, disappear, and reappear later in a confusing manner. What this film does have going for it are the special effects. In fact, the story seems to be nothing more than a convenient way to link one effects-laden scene to the next, and while that approach will never qualify as quality filmmaking, it is unabashedly fun to watch. The effects aren’t all crafted well, but they are exceptionally possessive of the fun 80’s kitsch factor (think Ghostbusters) and are very cartoony in an amusing way.

Oh, you want to hear the synopsis? Well, I’ll be honest, I’m not even completely sure what the story is about, but basically Wong Jing and Stanley Fung are security officers who work in a skyscraper that turns out to be tainted by bad feng shui and haunted by the spirits of angry Japanese soldiers. Also, some girl gets possessed, but her subplot doesn’t seem to matter much, since the film devotes little screen time to her and her plight. Anyway, Wong Jing’s girlfriend (Joey Wong) enlists the help of a spiritual medium (Joyce Godenzi) to rid the building of it’s problems. In typical Wong Jing fashion, it seems that every idea that came up during the brainstorming session for the film shows up in the final product. Consequently, the tone continually shifts between low-brow comedy and light horror.

Besides the mix of funny and unfunny jokes, we get a special effects bonanza; haunted TV sets walk, skeletons attack, a giant guillotine cuts a room in half, and a dude even blows up without much warning or reason. Most of it isn’t genuinely scary, but the film makes up for this by providing plenty of “Did that seriously just happen?” moments. All in all, if you can get past the complete lack of a storyline, there are many amusing moments and diversions to be found in The Ghost Snatchers. Of course, for further Wong Jing hijinks in a skyscraper, be sure to check out High Risk with Jet Li and Jackie Cheung, released nine years later in 1995.

Last week, I was going for a morning run with my brother. We started running together a few weeks ago, neither of us with any prior running experience, bar “the mile” back in middle and high school. Things had been going well considering we never consulted anyone regarding how to run correctly (which is kind of stupid since we have cousins that work at Fleet Feet in Madison), but on this particular day I felt a sharp pain in my foot as we started jogging down the street. Rather than say anything, I shrugged it off and continued to run. 25 minutes later, and near the end of our “course”, we ascended a steep hill with a large incline, and suddenly the pain in my foot worsened ten fold.

After “cooling down” to walking pace, I began limping and walking soon became an arduous task in and of itself. Cut to yesterday when I finally went to the doctor (one week after injuring myself) and was diagnosed with achilles tendinitis, which Wikipedia claims is “common among athletes training under less than ideal conditions.” That sentiment makes me feel like some kind of backyard hero, a sort of underdog in the running world who fell from glory because of situational causes. Realistically though, this is the result of my own stupidity, and besides, Usain Bolt probably trained in an even more hostile environment than me, and look at what he has accomplished.

I can’t help but feel this is karmic retribution for me making fun of my boss, who recently jumped off of a balcony and broke his foot while intoxicated. There was simply too much comedic potential in the situation to restrain myself. So now, for the time being, we’re both limping. There’s an upside though; I can pretend I’m Brother Mark from A Better Tomorrow.

That’s me, out for vengence.

A few days ago, I was with my friend Beth at a restaurant (that’s not us pictured above) and we were engaged in a conversation about what we had been up to lately; last week, she began working at a clothing store located within a mall in Madison. She said that there was little patronage in the store and the owners were quite lax about what their employees did while working. Being a hobbyist filmmaker, that struck me as an opportunity for a filming location. “Why would we film in the store?” she asked. I’m a Hong Kong cinema fanatic, and Hong Kong filmmakers are well versed in making virtually any location interesting on film. I figured this would be a good opportunity to try my hand at a similar practice.

I didn’t have to craft a story around the store. When I was a senior in high school, I had an independent study period where my goal was simply to produce some short films and music videos. Initially, I had planned on filming two separate stories: Hostile Takeover and Love In Translation. After writing and revising a script for a month, we managed to (sort of) film Hostile Takeover, the production of which was plagued with problems. Since that turned out to be such a headache, I scrapped the idea of completing Love In Translation before the end of the school year. In Hollywood, that would be called placing it in “development hell.” Two years later and my vision for a romantic comedy still hasn’t been realized.

Yes, Love In Translation, if you hadn’t already guessed by the title, is a romantic comedy. It is a bit strange that I’m trying to make one, being that I don’t care much for rom-coms (even those made in Hong Kong). I think that the genre is somewhat destructive from a social psychological perspective; I’ve met many a girl who has crafted her idea of relationships around the falsehoods propagated by these popcorn flicks. Not only are most romantic comedies formulaic, but the formula they all derive from is absurdly unrealistic. Probably the most horrifying experience I’ve had with them is the time that I went with some coworkers to see He’s Just Not That Into You at the movie theater. The underlying theme of the movie seemed to be that men are all assholes; every time this was brought to light saliently within the film, the women in the theater (that is, everyone in the theater besides me and my friend Dave) applauded wildly. I sunk into my chair.

Another message of the film was that “if a guy likes you, he’ll make it happen.” And if a guy doesn’t like you, he’ll like you eventually anyway. Huh? That’s not quite how things work in real life. Of course, movies are supposed to be escapist adventures from mundane life, but they should at least make it interesting. The combination of rom-com prophecy and romance self-help books is even more deadly. Books that claim to help one find romance are operating under the fallacy that every member of a particular sex can, and is to be, courted in the exact same way. Obviously that’s not true, and that’s why no one in a relationship got there by acting on advice from the printed page. On that note, however, I recommend checking out The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene, which is an interesting read, along with his other books.

So, because of my contention with romantic comedies, I’m not looking to any as a source of inspiration for my own movie. Instead, I’m trying to model my script on one of my all-time favorite films, Chungking Express by Wong Kar-Wai (pictured above). In some ways, I’d like to draw parallels between Madison and Hong Kong, and between the Midnight Express food stall in that film with our own clothing store location. When I’m planning a movie, I also try to pick out specific songs (which may or may not make it into the final cut) that illustrate specific moods I want to convey at certain points. When I was making Hostile Takeover, I was listening to a lot of Italian disco and Depeche Mode; the film ended up being set in the ’80s, and had a certain dark but cool vibe to it (that’s what I was going for, at least). And so, here are some preliminary tracks that I’ve had in mind for Love In Translation. Let your imagination run wild with them:

• Turn My Head by LIVE.
• First Of The Gang To Die by Morrissey.
• Language of Love by Dan Fogelberg.

Credit for the screenshot goes to LoveHKFilm.com.