Taxi Hunter
Reviewed by YTSL
At the 2000 Hong Kong International Film Festival,
Anthony Wong -- together with Lau Ching Wan and Francis Ng -- was acclaimed
as being the most sought-after local character actors of the last decade
of the 20th century. From all accounts, the HKFA Best Actor winner
-- for the notoriously grissly “Bunman: The Untold Story” -- is also
quite the character in real life, a loose cannon of sorts who is on the
record as stating that working with John Woo (on “Hard Boiled”) was “a
nightmare” and also that “I don’t think he is a particularly good director
and I don’t know why Hollywood thinks that he is...” (cf. Miles Wood’s
“Cine East”, 1998:136).
On the other side of the coin, Herman Yau appears
to be Anthony Wong’s favorite director as well as good friend. The
outspoken actor has additionally named a work helmed by Yau -- i.e., the
Category III rated TAXI HUNTER -- as his favorite of all the films that
he has worked on (which have included dramas like “Ordinary Heroes” and
comedies like “Now You See Love...Now You Don’t” along with actioners and
a whole range of Cat. III productions). This reason seemed as good
as any for this (re)viewer to want to check out the 1993 effort in which
Anthony Wong portrays a mild-mannered insurance agent turned anti-taxi
driver vigilante who a fellow Hong Konger has described as: A “little
man citizen who stands up to injustice in society”; plus is less of an
outright (anti-)hero or villain than a complex individual who “recognizes
no fine moral divide and exists in the contradictory realm of the gray
area between good and bad” (Stephen Shin, in his “The Professionals” chapter
of the “Hong Kong Panorama 1999-2000”, 2000:94).
What with my being (more) used to seeing Anthony
Wong play often deceptively ordinary looking maniacs as well as obviously
colorful characters, it felt strange watching a bespectacled him acting
like the Volvo-driving white collar worker and doting husband that his
Ah Kit character primarily and sincerely appeared to be in the first 20
minutes or so of TAXI HUNTER. Actually, even after he is given cause
to hate a whole host of almost unbelievably callous and ill-mannered taxi
drivers with a vengeance (by way of his pregnant wife -- who is played
by Perry Lai -- and unborn child losing their lives as a result of one
such cabbie), Ah Kit may still be one of the less generally frightening
and deranged personae that Anthony Wong has essayed. As such, this
movie is much less the horrifically ultra-violent flick that I had anticipated
it would be than a sympathetic account of how a good man could get moved
to want to kill certain of his fellow human beings (who may not be the
nicest people in the world but still are individuals with jobs, friends
plus -- in all probability -- family for whom they lavish love and care).
In some other films (in which murders are committed
and the police are detailed to identify the criminal and get him -- or
her -- off the streets), the clean cut Sergeant Yu Kai Chang character
portrayed by Yu Rong Guang would be the hero of the piece. Instead,
in TAXI HUNTER, his principal relevance to the main story comes by way
of his being the best friend -- and maybe even close relative (since he
can be heard addressing Ah Kit’s wife as “sister-in-law”) -- of the film’s
protagonist. Although Ng Man Tat’s Mak Si Gao -- who is Sergeant
Yu’s way less professional partner -- and Athena Chu’s Mak Suet Yan --
a TV reporter who also happens to be Mak Si Gao’s daughter -- initially
look like they only are around to be the comic relief and love interest
respectively, they end up having more meaningful roles to play in this
crime drama. Alternatively, the role of Senior Inspector T. M. Chan
does appear to be not much more than an extended cameo opportunity for
the very recognizable Woo Fung.
In “Sex & Zen and A Bullet in the Head”, Stefan
Hammond and Mike Wilkins asserted that in the year of TAXI HUNTER’s production
and release, “HK taxi drivers came under fire for all sorts of rude behavior:
cruising around with “Out of Service” notices that disappear at the wave
of an HK$100 note, levying illegal surcharges in bad weather, and refusing
to take people short distances. A sizeable groundswell of ill will
spiked up” (1996:170). It thus is almost surprising that -- unlike
with Herman Yau’s “The Untold Story” and “From the Queen to the Chief Executive”
-- this offering’s main events are not based on -- but, instead, only inspired
by -- real life happenings. On the other hand, I must confess to
being somewhat flabbergasted to learn that the work is considered by some
Hong Kong movie critics as a black comedy since I tend towards the view
that it can be read as a sad indictment of how arch-capitalist and anti-social
tendencies can move people to be terribly inconsiderate of strangers (who
nonetheless are fellow denizens of their territory)!
My rating for the film: 7.