Film Reviews

One Night In Mongkok

• Rating:
• Director: Tung-shin Yee
• Starring: Daniel Wu, Cecelia Cheung, Alex Fong
• Details: Hong Kong, 110mins, 18s

In Mongkok, the most populated place in the world, two triad gangs are on the verge of war when one gang pays a hitman to take out the opposing godfather. The police get wind of it and do everything they can to stop the hired gunman from completing his mission and stop the bloody war before it starts. Roy (Wu), a naive young gangster who is in town for his first job and also to search for a lost love, meets a young prostitute (Cheung) and the two begin a platonic love affair. Meanwhile, Detective Milo (Fong) has his own problems as he has a trigger-happy rookie to contend with while his team grumble about working on Christmas Eve. Their paths draw ever closer to a startling climatic sequence. Yee comes across as a huge fan of Michael Mann films; bathing his screen in pale-blue and neon-lit colours while delivering the action with panache but nonchalant style and, like Heat, Yee often swaps allegiance from the good guys to the bad guys, giving each side the same amount of screen time. Although clever and smooth, One Night In Mongkok can drag in places and the police informer tends to release the right info at the right time, which gives the impression of lazy writing.

Review by Gavin Burke