City War
Dick Lee: Chow Yun-Fat
Ken: Ti Lung
Ted: Norman Chu
IMDb link: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0094854
other links:
Version reviewed: DVD
Ratings:
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DVD Audio: 7 of 10
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DVD Video: 7 of 10
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Subtitles: 3 of 10
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Story: 8 of 10
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Performances: 8 of 10
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CYF: 9 of 10
The fact that Ti Lung is teamed up with Chow Yun-Fat in this film makes it worth
watching. Fans of heavy action will like the movie as well because
there is plenty of it (although not on a John Woo scale, not by any means). For
those who have a genuine interest in character study, this is also a film worth
watching, although it might not appear so at first glance. This is, for all of
its Western sensibilities, a very Chinese film.
Ti Lung plays Ken, a 20-year veteran cop who has been hardened into a harsh, tempermental
man by the increasing red tape of police work and the deaths of his comrades in the
line of duty. Chow Yun-Fat is Dick Lee, a much younger cop who, though he has been on
the force for only ten years, is Ken's superior officer. A skilled negotiator and a
crack shot who never misses, Dick appears to be happy-go-lucky in his personal life but
is dedicated to his job and willing to lose face if it will calm a tense situation.
After a few scenes in which we learn of the respective personalities of the two men,
the film begins in earnest with its main plot: that of the threat to Ken and his
family by Ted (played with an astounding amount of malevolence by Norman Chu), whom
Ken had sent to jail ten years ago. At the time Ken had been unwilling to shoot to kill
and had wounded Ted; after nursing a grudge for ten long years in a Hong Kong prison
Ted has turned hate into an art form. Upon his release from jail, the first thing Ted
does (after a disturbing sequence involving the quasi-rape of Penny, his girlfriend) is
plot revenge against the cop who captured him.
As fate would have it, Penny meets Dick at the bar where she is a lounge singer;
the two strike up an acquaintance which rapidly develops into a passionate romance.
Not realizing that the man with whom she is carrying on an affair is friend and
comrade to Ted's sworn emeny, Penny contributes even further to the rage and
deadly hatred between Ted and Ken. While Dick seems to care for Penny, his
real emotion is reserved for the "until death do us part" relationship which
he shares with Ken; when it is revealed to him the connection between Penny
and the man who has sworn to kill Ken, Dick is angry but more out of a sense
of betrayal than of anything else.
Penny, as is usual in many of the films made in this genre, is more of a plot-point
than a character. This isn't attributable to sexism - women are not excluded, they
are for the most part irrelevant to the story being told. Whether you choose to
view these stories as re-tellings of traditional Chinese themes or dismiss them as
simple "male bonding" tales, the end result is the same.
Hiring some thugs from the Mainland to kill Ken, Ted is free to turn his ire on Penny;
he freely admits that not only has he been gone for ten years but he is impotent. Even
so he is enraged that Penny should find solace with another man and thus all of Dick's
attempts to negotiate a truce between Ted and Ken are hopeless.
The attempt to kill Ken is unsuccessful but his wife and daughter are slaughtered and
his son seriously wounded. While trying to balance his sense of justice with a consuming
rage at the threat of injury to his godson, Dick hesitates a second too long to
dispatch the thug who is holding Ken's son and the boy is seriously injured. Because
Dick hesitated, Ken blames him for the boy's injuries. Family comes first, above all
else, and the utter rejection of Dick by Ken causes Dick far more grief than any of
the other wounds he has received. The scenes in which Ken literally pushes Dick out
of his life are harrowing, and CYF gives an outstanding portrayal of the deep grief
and shame that Dick feels for having not only failing to live up to his duties as
godfather to Ken's boy, but to his brotherly duties to Ken himself.
In order to redeem himself in his own as well as Ken's eyes, Dick seems to lose
his cultivated sense of balance and goes into a murderous rage, out to destroy utterly
the man who not only killed his best friend's wife and child but injured his god-son and
took away probably the most important thing in his life: the friendship of Ken.
The final scenes in the bus terminal are brutal, filmed true to the genre's requirements
and given meaning only by the tensions between the three principal combatants (Ted, Ken
and Dick). The recurring motifs of redemption through self-sacrifice include both
Penny and Dick, the only one to not be so redeemed in the end is Ted - this is part
of what makes him so evil. The scenes of the final destruction of Ted are arresting
for the pieta-like placement of Ken and Ted; even though the scenes are about action, the
level of emotion portrayed by Ti Lung and Chow Yun-Fat is considerable and adds to the
high drama of the moment.
Ken's relationship with his family is not explored as much as one might like but there
is a genuine warmth in his portrayal of Ken-as-family-man; little comedic touches
are a nice balance to his heavy-handed service to the Law outside of his little realm.
Ti Lung gives his best to a somewhat shallow role, and of course is always a pleasure to
see in fighting action. The final scenes are his real chance to shine, and he does
not disappoint.
Chow Yun-Fat's character is given more depth than Ti Lung's, and CYF's range brings
an extra something to any role, no matter how superficial. The grief Dick feels when
he sees his god-son lying injured on the street is clear and compelling; when Ken's
wife tries to fix him up with a rich girl from Canada he ends up playing a hilarious
drinking game with her which briefly showcases his comedic talents. The scene with Penny
in the discotheque in which they almost make love right on the dance floor is erotic,
both of them giving a very passionate performance.
It's worth it to spend the time and money to watch City War at least once, if for no
other reason that to see Ti Lung and Chow Yun-Fat, two of the greats of Hong Kong cinema,
teamed up again. They have a screen chemistry which gives any film in which they
appear together an automatic quality quotient. For those grounded in purely Western
films, look for the Chinese themes woven into this story of modern Hong Kong; they
add considerably to the film and make for some interesting character insights.
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