Code of Honour
Ho Chen-tung: O Chun-Hung
Wang Han: Lam Wai
Inspector Mai: Dick Wei
Mad Piao: Shing Fui-On
Hui: Chow Yun-Fat
directed by: Billy Chan Fu-Ye
IMDb link: IMDb link: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0094350
other links:
Version reviewed: LD
Ratings:
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LD Audio: 8 of 10
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LD Video: 5 of 10
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Subtitles: 6 of 10
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Story: 5 of 10
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Performances: 6 of 10
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CYF: 6 of 10
If there's anybody out there who considers him- or herself a Triad apologist,
then this is your movie. Avuncular grey-haired gentlemen drink tea around
mahogany tables, wrangle with one another over business matters and in general
behave like corporate CEOs... except when they're doing things like trying to
rape women, frying the hands of traitors on hibachis and slicing people open
with shards of glass.
"We win by ethics, not by violence," says Ho Chen-tung, the elder statesman of
the central organization which controls the Tsimshatsui area. Well... maybe.
Depends on just how you define 'ethics', I suppose. As long as it includes
the hibachi thing, then okay, I guess so. We meet Ho during a riot in 1972;
he is being pursued by a gaggle of thugs who are about to work out their
ethical dilemmas on his face with meat cleavers. Though Ho escapes with the
aid of Wang Han, a Vietnamese living in squalor in a refugee camp, Ho's daughter
is not so fortunate. At her funeral we meet Hui, Ho's son (played by Chow Yun-Fat
in the first of his two cameo appearances in this film). Hui has journeyed from
Australia, where he is a legitimate businessman, for the funeral of his sister and
while there makes no secret of the fact that he despises his father and his
particular brand of ethics. Having delivered this blow to Ho, he goes back to
Australia to hide out for the next hour and a half of the movie.
Fast forward to 1987. Wang Han is now a close friend of Ho, almost like the
son that Hui no longer seems to wish to be; Ho has given Wang a sea freight company
in gratitude for saving his life years before. Wang, sensing that Ho is aging
rapidly and needs the comfort of his family, talks Ho into giving up his Triad
duties, making up with Hui and moving to sunny Australia to enjoy retirement.
On Ho's 70th birthday there is a meeting of the three major
Triad bosses who owe Ho allegiance; the other two bosses do not align themselves
with Ho but "consult him on everything" as it is explained. The three who openly
ally themselves with Ho are Mad Piao (in a bezerk performance by Shing Fui-On),
Yaduki and Pao. Aging themselves, they are nevertheless more vigorous than the
elderly Ho and they seem to be a trifle discontent under his doddering leadership.
When these three are arrested they turn on Ho in an instant in exchange
for their own freedom. Things looks bad for Ho until Wang, enraged at the perfidy
of Piao, Yaduki and Pao, slaughter them. Without any witnesses (left alive), Ho is
set free to continue packing for his journey South.
In a series of plot wiggles (you can't really call them twists), Ho is arrested
for something else just as Hui is putting Dad's luggage in the back of the Rolls. In
a marvel of understatement, Hui rolls his eyes, says "Oh Daddy, not again" and leaves
for the airport in a huff. Ho, not thrilled with the idea of spending literally the
rest of his life in jail, commits suicide. The end.
The problem with this movie is that the violence, though graphic, carries almost no
punch. You really don't care when people are killed because the writer and the director
didn't make you care. Though Shing Fui-On does a very interesting job as Mad Piao,
he seems to be awash in a sea of people sighing, making annoyed noises, eating sandwiches
at their desks and other not-so-thrilling things. The scene in the hibachi restaurant
is gory but somehow unexciting, the attempted rape of Tu Hsiao Li, an illegal immigrant
trying to buy an identity card from Ho's nephew, is distasteful but again, you really
don't care. Hui, Ho's eternally disappointed son, comes off as more of a whiner than a
man who objects to Dad's profession on any sort of moral grounds.
This isn't a bad movie, it's just not a good one. If you want to see CYF playing the
role of an older man with some aplomb, check out the television series "Big Hong Kong",
it's much better, there's no whining and it won't make you feel queasy every time you pass by a
Benihana's.
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