PTU

Perhaps you, like me, hate film titles that consist of abstract numbers and/or letters. I don't mean something like 1941 or K9 or D.O.A. -- with those, you have a frame of reference. I mean combos that mean nothing outside the context of the story (which you haven't seen yet) rendering them utterly meaningless and thus unlikely to provoke any interest whatsoever (9? U-571? THX-1138? I'm intrigued!).

In the case of PTU (2003) we're talking Police Tactical Unit, and before you say, "Oh no, not a Hong Kong S.W.A.T. flick" let me reassure you: The cops in this film may wear quasi-military uniforms, but they're no black-clad stormtroopers repelling down the sides of buildings. Led by cooly menacing Mike (Simon Lam), they're merely one more gang in this tale of rivalry and retribution on the mean streets of gangster-ridden HK. They're not above beating and torture to get information, they lie to their superiors, falsify reports, cut deals with local drug lords -- in effect, they're just like real cops. And the gangsters are no slouches either. The kingpins, with names like Bald Head and Eyeball, are as nasty as they wanna be, certainly up to the sadistic standards of any self-respecting Hong Kong triad boss.

What makes PTU really great, though, is the way the story is told. This is a Johnnie To film, and Johnnie To, while he's been around awhile, has emerged in recent years as among the most intriguing genre directors of Hong Kong's post-colonial period. His films are finely crafted, they move, they pop with a stylistic frisson that raises the cinematic bar. PTU, for example, is interesting on just about every level. It's gorgeous to look at; the lighting, framing and use of negative space transform the dark city streets into an absorbing moving tableaux. Some shots linger just to let you soak in the mise-en-scene (like one where three cops are waiting outside a building -- the color, the way the frame is broken up, it's just tasty). Plotting and characterization are quirky and unpredictable; Sergeant Lo (Lam Suet) is the tough head of the organized crime unit, bullying triad members in a restaurant, only to get jumped by them around the corner. His gun is taken in the fracas, his subsequent search for his missing manhood providing the forward thrust of the narrative (a la Kurosawa's Stray Dog). Mike helps in the search, and suspicious CID inspector Cheng (Ruby Wong) knows something is up. Everything ends with a twist and you'll love it.

I'm not alone in my appreciation for PTU; the film has spawned half a dozen sequels with no end in sight. So nevermind the crap title, check out PTU, a very well-made and engaging piece of Hong Kong cinema that will most likely get you hooked on Johhnie To. Next stop, Triad Election ...

Destiny's Son at the Japan Society

I wrote about this film years ago in Stray Dogs & Lone Wolves. I said, "The feel of Destiny's Son is like a haiku. Lyrical, minimalist, it is a beautiful film, infused with the Japanese aesthetic qualities of tranquility, introspection and reverence for nature ... A deep Zen calm surrounds and interpenetrates the people and settings of the film; even the violence and treachery are subsumed in it, making these elements somehow more and less disturbing simultaneously." I'm inclined to agree.

Anyhow, The New York Japan Society will be showing it February 19th and I encourage all my NYC homies to get on over there and see it. Director Kenji Misumi made a lot of chambara pictures with the legendary Raizo Ichikawa (above), but only one like this -- a true gem.

Epitaph

K-horror meets art house in this majestic masterpiece of the macabre from 2007. Sibling directors Jeong Beom-sik and Jeong Sik spin a haunting yarn of serial murder, unnatural love and supernatural retribution set in a Seoul hospital circa 1942. The membrane separating life and death is wafer-thin in this house of pain, all rich mahogany hues and dark shadows, and nothing is what it seems. If you love having your expectations defied, if you savor a confounding plot twist, if you're up for a rousing game of "who's the ghost?" (as well as "who's about to become one?"), well, here you go.

Three stories entwine and inform one another: An intern (Jin Goo) falls in love with the frozen corpse of his arranged fiance (Yeo Ji); A young girl (Ko Joo-yeon) survives a car accident that kills her mother and potential step-father (Park Ji-ah, David McInnis), only to be haunted by their ghosts; and husband-and-wife doctors (Kong Ho-seok, Kim Bo-kyeong) try to determine why one of them doesn't cast a shadow. Meanwhile, someone is brutally mutilating Japanese soldiers in the vicinity and an intrepid army cop (ubiquitous character actor Kim Eung-soo) wants to know who. Oh, and I did mention ghosts, right? Yes, there are ghosts. The kind that don't just float there looking wispy, but rather tend to grab your ass and pull you right through the morgue tray door!

There is one issue, however, namely a certain slow-as-molasses-in-January element. Not all the way through, mind you, just now and then, but increasingly during the third act. Epitaph is, after all, the Jeong brothers' film debut, and their beginner status is apparent in the way they're just a bit too in love with a suspenseful scene, dragging it out until all suspense is drained and the audience is left with a mounting "get on with it!" annoyance. Fortunately, there's enough talent on display here to warrant optimism for future films (and, as I say, the majority of this one moves along just fine).

Hats off to 12-year-old Ko Joo-yeon (above) for a show-stealing performance unlike any I've seen since little Eun Seo-woo ran off with it in K-horror classic Phone (2002). Ko's adult contemporaries are no slouches either, raising the overall prestige of the picture with their understated yet intense portrayals.

So yeah, absolutely see this film. The Jeong brothers have arrived, and from the looks of it we can expect exciting things from them in the years to come.

Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai

Back in August '09, I posted my review of Tadashi Imai's Cruel Tales of Bushido. Now I've gotten hold of an advance copy of AnimEigo's DVD release (out February 9th) re-dubbed Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai. As with all AnimEigo releases, the disk is packed with historical and cultural information in the form of supplemental notes and essays, as well as explanatory supertitles above particularly idiomatic/referential subtitles. In short, the package is a Japanese history nerd's dream. And speaking of Japanese history nerds, my boy Randy Schadel from the Samurai Archives provides one of his typically voluminous pieces on the disk, a definite value-add.

Even if you're not all that interested in Japanese history, you'll still find this film an unforgettable experience and a unique look into a centuries-old martial culture. Plus it's a great showcase for the talents of the great Kinnosuke Nakamura, here portraying seven different roles to devastating effect. Needless to say I'm overjoyed to see this true classic of Japanese cinema receiving the long-overdue DVD release it deserves.

The Beast Stalker

This top-notch, edge-of-your-seat Hong Kong crime thriller from 2008 packs more than a couple of emotional gut-punches. For the record, these come primarily from fucked-up things happening to little kids. While I'm not a big fan of the killing, kidnapping and general endangerment of children in film, here it's done -- dare I say tastefully? Certainly effectively, adding an extra layer of involvement for the audience beyond the standard police procedural and action elements.

The story pivots on a singular, multi-vehicle traffic collision from which the various characters emerge, their faces scarred, their lives entangled, forever changed. Except one, a little girl, her tiny body pierced by the bullets of a well-meaning cop in pursuit of a crime boss (the chase leading up to the crash). Sadly, wee Yee won't be growing up any time soon. Of course the cop, Sergeant Tong (Nicholas Tse, above right), will never get over it, so when the dead girl's sister is kidnapped, he's doubly motivated to save the little tyke and make some kind of amends to the mother (Zhang Jing Chu) and the universe at large. He's in for a rough ride, though; the kidnapper, Hung (an electrifying Nick Cheung, above left), is an elite ex-assassin, lightening fast and smart as a whip. He'll give Sergeant Tong a run for his money ...

The Beast Stalker director Dante Lam employs hand-helds and steady cams to create a kinetic, P.O.V. style that drops you right into the breathless action. Nice to see Hong Kong cinema getting back to gritty after the string of super-slick, Hollywood-style outings that characterized the post-handover era. The film won several awards in 2009 including the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award for Best Actor for Nick Cheung. More good news: Beast Stalker 2 (working title) just finished shooting in Hong Kong last week, so keep an eye out for that one (will premier over there this Summer). The follow-up film isn't a sequel -- the two male leads swap roles (Tse is the criminal, Cheung the cop) -- a far more intriguing proposition.

If you're in Europe or Japan, you'll be able to rent/purchase The Beast Stalker tout de suite -- it was released on region-2 DVD by Cine-Asia on January 4th. If you're in the US, you're in good shape -- it's been out on disk since May, 2009. As for the inevitable Hollywood remake, well, let's just hope they don't wreck it ...

Kurosawa Centenial

If you're in the NYC area, why not celebrate Akira Kurosawa's 100th birthday with a film? From January 6th through February 5th, the Film Forum is showing 28 of the master's films including my personal favorite, High and Low (above, playing January 22nd). I also recommend the seldom-seen The Idiot (1951) playing January 17th and Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945) on the 19th.

Sure, Criterion has released lots of these pictures on DVD, but I don't have to tell you how much difference the big screen still makes, especially in regards to the compositional skills of an artist like Kurosawa. Maybe when our LCDs get to be 300 inches, we can all stay home, but for now, get thee to the Forum!

Thirst

Who says vampires can't get it on? Not me, and certainly not Park Chan-wook, Korean auteur extraordinaire (The Revenge Trilogy, JSA, Three ... Extremes). He's also jettisoned the whole fang thing, but otherwise the standard lore is in place (the blood is the life, no sunshine, superhuman strength, etc.). And yet this one element, sex, opens things up considerably, plot-wise, making for a more intimate, complex and unpredictable story of a man, a woman, and their sexual/vampiric relationship.

The man in question, a Catholic priest named Sang-hyun (Korean superstar Song Kang-ho), volunteers to become infected with an ebola-like virus as part of a drug trial in Africa. Sang-hyun (get it? Sang is French for blood) is inadvertently transfused with some vampire blood that keeps the virus at bay, but, of course, makes him a vampire in the process. In keeping with convention, Sang-hyun's genesis involves a heightening of the senses, but this time out, that extends into his pants. Yes, in addition to a newfound thirst for blood, he discovers he's also got a hankerin' for some good old fashioned poontang. This leads him to pretty yet troubled Tae-ju (Kim Ok-bin) who becomes his first girlfriend (although she's married to someone else ... ). However, Sang-hyun never fully abandons his moral nature, and his inner conflict, reminiscent of Louis from Interview with the Vampire, makes his character that much more compelling.

What I found most striking about Thirst was the way the film defied my expectations. I've seen a lot of vampire films, but this one kept me off balance throughout. Park Chan-wook takes the "rules" of vampirism (clearly borrowing from Anne Rice) and turns them sideways, defying audience expectations while working within the parameters of the genre. As I say, he brings human sexuality into the mix (thus eliminating the need for the penetrating fang), and we all know how complicated things can get when that happens. The line between human and vampire is blurred to the point where genre predictability is all but obliterated.

Thirst won the jury prize at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival last Spring, the second Cannes award for Park Chan-wook (he got one for Oldboy in 2004).