One Nite in Mongkok

Synopsis: After a high octane car chase a young man, the son of gang lord is killed, and all hell breaks loose in Mongkok between the warring factions. Roy (Daniel Wu) is hired to kill one of the gang leaders and befriends prostitute Dan Dan (Cecilia Cheung). Meanwhile Detective Milo (Alex Fong) is desperately trying to keep the peace. Soon both men's lives will cross in a night of bloody retribution that will leave no one unscarred.

As the movie states at its finale, Mongkok is the single most densely populated area in the world, a claustrophobic urban nightmare of Hong Kong living that makes the perfect backdrop for this sombre but affecting thriller that relies more on characterisation and storytelling than action set pieces to tell its world-weary story.

Yes, the crime thriller has become fairly derivative staple of Hong Kong cinema. Since the days of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow and The Killer, the sharp suits, the shades, the excessive melodrama and the double-handed gun battles have all become the norm. The Infernal Affairs series made a valiant stab at reinventing the format but One Nite in Mongkok takes it one step further.

The characters are beautifully created. This film spends equal time looking at the lives of both the good and the dark players so their eventual meeting is even more devastating. The violent eruptions that punctuate the film's leisurely pace are truly shocking but play an important part in the elaborate storyline that Tung-Shing Lee has created.

Cecilia Cheung of Shoalin Soccer fame is excellent in the clichéd "tart with a heart" role of Dan Dan. She exudes naïve sexiness and adds a delightful comic touch to her performance. Lam Suet as the informant also adds a bizarre line of humour as he answers his numerous mobile phones. The two leads, however, are strictly serious. Daniel Wu, a heartthrob in his homeland,  plays the killer with solemn dedicatio. Alex Fong, star of Stormriders, plays a typically stoic and forceful police chief but gives him a heart, despite the unrelenting lengths he is willing to go to catch his prey.

The dynamic that the film brings to the fore and what makes it so watchable is that the moral force of the two leads is interchangeable. In the end the criminal is often more admirable than the police chief and his team. The chaos of Hong Kong has corrupted everyone and only the killer and the prostitute from afar seem to retain any semblance of being a human being. That's what makes One Nite in Mongkok even more enthralling.

 

 

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