|
||
|
Screening on 17 August 2003: An acerbic satire on the Hong Kong crime film genre starring popular and award-winning actor Lau Ching-Wan (Full Alert, Black Mask), Too Many Ways To Be No. 1 has gained the reputation as one of the major Cantonese films from the 1990s. You only have to scratch the surface of this movie to find an ultra-cynical view of crime and corruption in two of Asia's economic powerhouses, China and Taiwan. Lau Ching-Wan is Wong Kau, a small-time Hongkie triad member with big plans. Johnnie To and screenwriter Wai Ka-Fai (who takes the directing credit but is generally accepted as sharing this role with To) have a very jaundiced view of personal destiny and drive home the point that random events shape the narrative's characters more than any greater design - life either works for you or conspires against you. The humour is pitch black and there are some classic Edgar Allan Poe-like moments which will leave the audience doubled over with laughter - a sequence involving the personal pager of a dead criminal is superb. Weird, garish characters are the order of the day in this film, many of whom could have stepped from a Fellini production, the latter personified by Brother Blackie, a grotesque Taiwanese gang leader with a penchant for hacking off peoples' thumbs and fingers. John Woo's Hong Kong DOP, Wong Wing-Hang, captures images (with a variety of lenses) that are as unsettling as they are brilliant. Cacine Wong's music is in perfect tune with the movie's onscreen oddness. If you're looking for something completely different and completely entertaining, Too Many Ways To Be No. 1 fits the bill perfectly. - JOHN SNADDEN "Too Many Ways To Be
No.1 has a devious structure that "Wildly entertaining
black comedy / triad picture that's |
|
|
