Mongkok Story
Director: Wilson Yip
Year: 1996
Rating: 7.0
In one sense this
is a film about a young man discovering himself, but played as it is within
the boundaries of the “Goo Wak Jai” (young triads) genre, it takes on very
different hues than your typical coming of age film. This is not about proms
or losing one’s virginity – but instead about revenge, loyalty and of course
facing death. But throw on top of this, the fact that Wilson Yip directs
it and you have a film that goes into interesting territory with moments
of amusing deadpan humor and moments of unexpected poignancy. Yip enjoys
poking slyly subversive holes through well-tested genres (i.e. Bio-Zombie
and Bullets Over Summer) and he does the same here in adroit fashion. The
film hovers lightly between very tongue in cheek humor and some conventional
triad story telling - and one keeps waiting for these two disparate
elements to crash into one another and burn, but they manage not to.
Two totally enjoyable and professional performances – though in primarily
supporting roles – are vital in keeping the film afloat. Roy Cheung wisely
chooses to underplay his role and simply allows his strong presence to speak
for itself – while Anthony Wong throws it all out there in a wonderfully
evil but extremely funny performance. Could any actor but Wong keep a straight
face as he forces a man to commit fellatio on him as a punishment and then
later turn to his men and tell them very matter of factly “I am addicted
now, can any of you help?” Both actors in very different styles manage to
create original characters within the structure of a triad film.
Edmund Leung is a clean cut busboy working in a small greasy spoon coffee
shop where the cockroaches are larger than the entrees – and it is a place
where a group of young triad gang members hang out daily reading comic books
and talking the talk. Like Yip’s heroes in Bio-Zombie, they aggressively
sell pirated VCDs from a small box sized store in Mongkok. Their boss is
Roy – and an imagined opening scene paints him with pulp fiction driven guitar
as a heroically mythical fighter in the triad world. Leung is drawn towards
this world of big talk – but it is really events outside of his choosing
that force him into joining this gang. In fact, most of the events that propel
the film are from happenstance more than of any one’s choosing. Soon this
happenstance leads Roy’s gang into a conflict with the gang of Anthony Wong.
Wong is having trouble deciding whether he wants to be a triad leader or
an action film star. He has produced a film in which he is the lead actor
that is a rip off of El Mariachi – guitar case and all. At the premier –
Roy’s boys boo the film and this is the first in a slow chain of events that
will eventually escalate from words to killing. Later at a hostess bar, one
of Roy’s gang tells a girl that Wong has a venereal disease – which leads
to a hilarious scene of one girl after another making outlandish excuses
not to go out with Wong – from “I have to wash my mom’s kidneys” to “My piles
hurt” to “I am a man”! Roy tries to negotiate an end to the escalation –
but Anthony is basically crazy – and there is no doubt that peace isn’t going
to be the final result. The big bosses (Michael Chan being Roy’s) also try
to parlay peace but times have passed them by.
This was an enjoyable addition to the triad film catalogue – Wilson Yip is
clearly having some fun - but even so it follows the genre formula
closely enough to create a fairly tense and suspenseful film and has the
requisite “hacking” scenes. The main weakness of the film is the lack of
particularly interesting actors playing the roles of Roy’s gang – but Roy
and Anthony nicely fill the space around the younger actors. The soundtrack
– much of it acoustic or Spanish guitar driven – is simply terrific and adds
tremendously to the varying moods of the film.
