Drug War (2012, Johnnie To)

 

If the stars had lined up when I was born so that I could have the career of my dreams, I would be a story editor in the movie industry. Seriously. I care about logic and believability in stories. I care about characters making sense and acting like humans. I care about internal consistency. I would catch all kinds of problems at the screenplay stage with just one question: Why would he do that? 

Johnnie To's 2012 movie "Drug War", starring Louis Koo and Hong-lei Sun, is a mirror image of another Milkyway movie, "Expect the Unexpected" from 1998. Although To was not credited as the director of that movie, he was heavily involved and was the director in effect (according to To's own claim). In the earlier movie, a group of heavily armed robbers from the Mainland wreaked havoc in Hong Kong, ending in a massive shootout in the street. In the later movie, it is a group of drug dealers from Hong Kong who caused a massive and prolonged shootout with Mainland police. Both shootout scenes are obviously inspired by Michael Mann's "Heat", which was in turn inspired by the real-life bank robbery in Los Angeles. 

It is curious that, in both movies, the Mainland characters are wooden automatons, even though they are portrayed as dichotomous bad guys (1998) and good guys (2012), respectively. Although one could argue that he was constrained by the film censorship board in the Mainland, where "Drug War" was made, that the police must be morally unimpeachable, I don't think To and his writers would have been interested in humanizing them at all anyway. Instead, the only somewhat interesting character is the evil Louis Koo, who would do anything to survive. Ultimately, this character does not pass the "Why would he do that?" sniff test, but the underlying theme of surviving at any cost, by hook or by crook, willing to throw anyone under the bus (literally), has its own barely disguised meaning for the Hong Kong film industry as it was slowly absorbed into the Mainland system. One could view this character as an ironic personification of the once-brilliant Hong Kong filmmakers in the post-1997 world. 

Nevertheless, the action scene is completely ridiculous! While technically proficient, it is as nonsensical as the stoic Mainland characters. Even though I am all for cynical symbolism, I still need action scenes to be driven by human logic and well made.