Hui's substantive comedic talent is deployed with pervasive utility in Security Unlimited, one of the films which finds Hui at the peak of his efforts, deploying ingenious comedy constructions to a working-class narrative in which Hong Kongers navigate the evolving spaces brought by transnational capital and commerce. Following the exploits of a security agency and a few of its employees attempting to climb the managerial hierarchy, Security Unlimited deploys comedic set-piece after set-piece to provide a comfortable, escapist facade while sub-textually the film excavates truths related to the underlying struggle of the HK and its diasporic populace. The treatment in Hui's work is almost always relatively light-hearted and absurdist, yet through his portrayal of characters whom almost always feel torn between the colonial condition and their lived-in culture, Hui's films manage to be incisive through far more welcoming sensibilities than other film's attempting any such evocation on Hong Kong. Security Unlimited has a sequence where it touches on the migrant crisis post-Vietnam in a way that feels incredibly attuned to what Ann Hui's Boat People would place much more emphasis on with a more dramatic treatment, yet Security Unlimited still invokes similar sentiments about Hong Kong as a city, one viewed with great admiration by the outsider, whether that be a foreign businessman or migrant escaping authoritarianism and bloodshed. Security Unlimited narratively speaking is a straight-forward comedy of likable losers, and while some of these characterizations and their subsequent antics may rub some viewers the wrong way given their actions are almost always tied to selfish-interest, Hui's film manages to keep them affectionate due to dynamic environment of Hong Kong he invokes, one of consistent disruption and change from a litany of influences foreign and domestic, with the main characters of this story being reactionary to their environment, their primary impulse solely rooted in survival in this unique locality which rests between eastern and western influence.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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