Whenever I'm having one of those days where I feel useless and/or uninspired, I go back to the well and find a To film which I have yet to seen and well, lol...God bless Johnnie To. He is a tonic for me in those moments and I guess the fear is I will eventually run out - 32 films and counting. Macau, a near-mythical bastion of triad violence and corruption is the perfect setting for Tony Leung's corrupt cop, a man of action with no remorse. His counterbalance, the mysterious Lau Ching-wan, circles like a hawk surveilling his prey. These men feel destined for confrontation but we don't know why for much of the film. The Longest Nite doesn't have the same existential permeance as some of To's more heralded work, but this baby still slaps pretty hard. While The Longest Nite is enshrouded in the dynamic formal style and kineticism one expects from To, it never feels quite as slick or clean. Vice defines the milieu here. Light is accentuated throughout, it's piercing, cutting through the squalor of the spatiality from time to time but it is ephemeral - the return to darkness is guaranteed. Darkness reigns here both figuratively and literally. The Longest Nite doesn't have the same existential weight in a sense, but Tony Leung and Lau Ching-wan's eventual showdown does feel cosmic (the mirrors!). As powerful and smooth as they are, they both are merely pawns, who control very little once the true scope of cruelty and power is revealed. Unsurprisingly, both leads are fantastic here, oozing cool throughout this mean, violent triad flick that per usual for To stands above nearly all his contemporaries. The scene in the jail cell between Tony Leung and Lau Ching-wan is an all-timer in To's oeuvre.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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