Thursday, November 14, 2013

Running Out of Karma: The Enigmatic Case


Running Out of Karma is my on-going series on Johnnie To and Hong Kong cinema. Here is an index.

After getting his start working in television at Hong Kong's TVB studio in the mid-1970s, Johnnie To made his feature debut in 1980 with a dark, stylish martial arts film made on the cheap for a small, leftist studio. Though quite similar in tone and style to the debut films of other Hong Kong New Wave directors made around this time, especially Tsui Hark's The Butterfly Murders and Patrick Tam's The Sword, The Enigmatic Case failed to find an audience and To retreated to television for another six years. To was a mere 25 years old when he made it (in 1980 Tsui was 29, Tam 32, Sammo Hung 28, Yuen Woo-ping 35, Jackie Chan 26, John Woo 34 , Ching Siu-tung 27 and Ann Hui 33. To is the same age as Ringo Lam, two years older than Stanley Kwan and three years older than Wong-Kar-wai) and it does seem like the film of an inexperienced director. Like a child learning to crawl, To in his debut demonstrates all the individual technical skills necessary to make an excellent film, but can't quite coordinate them enough to send the film off in the proper direction.

Like The Butterfly Murders, The Enigmatic Case is a genre mashup of noir mystery tropes with the traditional Chinese wuxia film. Wuxia films typically revolve around "knight errant" figures, wandering swordsmen who don't quite fit into the societies they defend and whose values they uphold. The genre traces its roots to classical Chinese literature, but in film form, at least, was heavily influenced by international action cinema, in particular the Hollywood Western (and its Italian variations) and the Japanese samurai film (particularly the work of Akira Kurosawa, with Yojimbo as the launch point for next fifty-plus years of action film). To's film follows an adventure of a wandering swordsman named Lu Tien-chun, who becomes caught up in the theft of government gold and the murder of its thieves. Framed for the murders, he must find the real villain in order to clear his name. Told with a convoluted flashback structure, the narrative always seems less intelligible than it really is, as characters routinely appear before their backstory is made clear and occasionally are never really explained (after seeing it twice I'm still unsure of the nature of the man who helps Lu escape from prison, then returns near the end only to disappear again - just another wandering swordsman?)


Cherie Chung, in the first screen credit for one of the brighter Hong Kong stars of the 80s (Sammo Hung's Winners & Sinners, Patrick Tam's Cherie and To's own The Eighth Happiness), plays a young woman Lu meets on his quest. They have a falling out when she discovers he's the man wanted for killing her father, whom she is out to avenge. Lu protests his innocence and the two oscillate a few times: she likes him, she suspects him, and back again, with little rhyme or reason. Unlike most subsequent To heroines, Chung's character lacks much of an internal life. She mostly just functions as a plot device, something for Lu to agonize over as he stares blankly into space (To really doesn't get much out of star Damian Lau, who I recall as unremarkable in John Woo's Last Hurrah for Chivalry and Tsui's Zu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain). While the film begins with an extensive credit sequence music video, of a scarred Lu wandering the countryside looking mournful, getting into spectacular swordfights and seeing images of Cherie, the film itself never again captures that kind of romanticism. Aside from their meet cute, a cunningly staged sequence in a rainstorm that ends with them realizing they've been sheltering under the same tree (a visual trope To will revisit much later in his career: it's the foundation of Turn Left, Turn Right, for example), their relationship remains almost entirely unexplored.


In To's later films, the plots often have an air of inevitability, a clockwork precision founded in the nature of his characters and the whims of the universe. An intriguing nesting of chance with predestination, with the heroes in constant struggle against their fate, often to the point of rewriting the rules of reality itself. That's not the case here, as Lu the protagonist is essentially a passive figure: he more or less wanders around aimlessly until the plot is revealed to him. (Compare to The Butterfly Murders, whose scholar-investigator hero is often on the sidelines of the action, but is always pushing forward to solve the mystery. When he solves it, he leaves and takes us with him, letting the resolution of the climactic fight scene play out entirely off-screen). When Lu does take action, he is always ineffective: the people he tries to protect tend to end up dead. This is what happens in the film's final fight, and what I'd bet was the biggest reason for the film's box office failure. The (final) villain holds Cherie with a sword to her throat, telling Lu to stand down or she'll get it. Lu doesn't believe him ("You ain't that mean, " he says) and the bad guy kills her. This darkness is very much in line with other New Wave wuxias (Tam's The Sword is similarly nihilistic, as are some of Sammo Hung's darker moments), and also To's later films, especially the first series of gangster movies he produced at his Milkyway Image studio (Expect the Unexpected, The Longest Night, The Odd One Dies). But To at this point doesn't have the visual artistry on display in Tam's film (sub-Tarkovskian modernism melded with spectacular Ching Siu-tung co-ordinated stuntwork) or the charismatic and athletic superstars of Hung's films. And those dark late-90s films very nearly bankrupted Milkyway anyway.


What The Enigmatic Case does show is that Johnnie To always had a keen eye for composition, as the most consistent thing about the film is that it's almost always lovely to look at. He also shows a flair for innovation in the film's finale, which features an extended, probably too-extended, experiment with step-printed slow motion, as Cherie attempts to get in-between Lu and her father as they duel. There are similarly choreographed fight scenes in earlier Hong Kong films (one in Lau Kar-leung's Dirty Ho comes immediately to mind), but To's slow-motion has an unusual abstracting effect on the action, an aesthetic approach that Wong Kar-wai would fully realize in Ashes of Time 15 years later. As well it shows a filmmaker very much in line with the sensibilities of his contemporaries. As the Hong Kong New Wave would mutate throughout the 1980s, with Tsui Hark softening his punkier edges for special effects and moguldom, John Woo moving from Shaw Brothers swordplay films to reinvent the gangster genre with his cycle of so-called "heroic bloodshed" films and Tam and Hui pursuing more traditionally high-class fare like Nomad or Boat People, Johnnie To would spend the first half of the 1980s working in television. When he returned to features, it would be as a director for hire, working for Tsui Hark helming the Maggie Cheung - Raymond Wong vehicle Happy Ghost III, a film which has almost nothing in common with The Enigmatic Case. But pairing these first two films together gives us a glimpse of the two Tos to come: the director of dark, edgy, violent thrillers and the maker of bright, warm and wild romantic comedies. They're the same guy.

Next Up: Happy Ghost III

Running Out of Karma: Index


This is an index to Running Out of Karma, my writing on Johnnie To and his contemporaries, predecessors and influences in Hong Kong and Chinese-language cinema.

Chronological Johnnie To:

Introduction - Nov 13, 2013
The Enigmatic Case (Johnnie To, 1980) - Nov 14, 2013
The Happy Ghost Series (Clifton Ko, Johnnie To & Ringo Lam, 84-86) - Nov 26, 2013
Seven Years Itch (Johnnie To, 87) - Dec 02, 2013
The Eighth Happiness (Johnnie To, 88) - Nov 21, 2014

The Big Heat (Johnnie To, 88) - Jan 09, 2015
The Heroic Trio (Johnnie To, 93) - Aug 01, 2015
Drug War (Johnnie To, 12) - Dec 11, 2013
Blind Detective (Johnnie To, 13) - Oct 11, 2014
Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 (Johnnie To, 14) - Nov 15, 2014

Previously produced works:

The Big Heat (Johnnie To, 88) - Mar 07, 2013
The Johnnie To Whimsicality Index - Mar 17, 2013
Infernal Affairs, The Departed and Johnnie To - Mar 19, 2013
They Shot Pictures #13: Johnnie To - Mar 26, 2013
The George Sanders Show Episode One: The Big Heat and Drug War - Jun 29, 2013
The Summer of Sammo Index - July 01, 2013
Blind Detective (Johnnie To, 13) - Sep 26, 2013
Green Snake (Tsui Hark, 93) - Oct 25, 2013

Running Out of Karma:

Introduction - Nov 13, 2013
The Enigmatic Case (Johnnie To, 1980) - Nov 14, 2013
Cinema City and A Better Tomorrow II (John Woo, 1987) - Nov 21, 2013
Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark, 86) - Nov 22, 2013
The Happy Ghost Series (Clifton Ko, Johnnie To & Ringo Lam, 84-86) - Nov 26, 2013

Prison on Fire (Ringo Lam, 87) - Nov 27, 2013
Seven Years Itch (Johnnie To, 87) - Dec 02, 2013
Working Class (Tsui Hark, 85) - Dec 07, 2013
Drug War (Johnnie To, 12) - Dec 11, 2013
Royal Warriors (David Chung, 86) - Dec 19, 2013

She Shoots Straight (Corey Yuen, 90) - Dec 22, 2013
Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan, 96) - Jan 01, 2014
Young Detective Dee and the Rise of the Sea Dragon (Tsui Hark, 13) - Feb 27, 2014
Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark, 84) - Mar 03, 2014
Seven Swords (Tsui Hark, 05) - Mar 11, 2014

The Blade (Tsui Hark, 95) - Mar 19, 2014
Heroes Shed No Tears (John Woo, 86) - Mar 28, 2014
Once a Thief (John Woo, 91) - Mar 28, 2014
Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Stephen Chow & Derek Kwok, 13) - Apr 03, 2014
Love in the Time of Twilight (Tsui Hark, 95) - Apr 04, 2014

The Lovers (Tsui Hark, 95) - Apr 04, 2014
Red Cliff (John Woo, 08) - Apr 04, 2014
Zodiac Killers (Ann Hui, 91) - Apr 09, 2014
SPL: Sha Po Lang (Wilson Yip, 05) -  Apr 23, 2014
New Dragon Gate Inn (Raymond Lee, 92) -  Apr 24, 2014

Wuxia (Peter Chan, 11) - Apr 25, 2014
The Legend is Born: Ip Man (Herman Yau, 10) - Apr 27, 2014
The Duel (Chang Cheh, 71) - Apr 28, 2014
Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (Chang Cheh, 80) - Apr 29, 2014
Ip Man: The Final Fight (Herman Yau, 13) - Apr 29, 2014

Tai Chi Zero/Tai Chi Hero (Stephen Fung, 12-13) - May 01, 2014
The Way of the Dragon (Bruce Lee, 71) - May 02, 2014
The Assassin (Chang Cheh, 67) - May 12, 2014
The Midnight After (Fruit Chan, 14) - May 25, 2014
Martial Club (Lau Kar-leung, 81) - Jun 11, 2014

The Bride with White Hair (Ronny Yu, 93) - Jun 25, 2014
Three Hong Kong Romantic Comedies - Jul 29, 2014
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Father (Peter Chan, 93) - Jul 29, 2014
Isabella (Edmund Pang Ho-cheung, 06) - Aug 01, 2014
Painted Faces (Alex Law, 88) - Aug 02, 2014

Golden Chicken 2 (Samson Chiu, 03) - Aug 03, 2014
Painted Skin (King Hu, 93) - Aug 03, 2014
Oxhide (Liu Jiayin, 05) - Aug 04, 2014
Legend of the Mountain (King Hu, 79) - Aug 07, 2014
Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark, 84) - Aug 27, 2014

Accident (Soi Cheang, 09) - Sep 23, 2014
Blind Detective (Johnnie To, 13) - Oct 11, 2014
A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon (Tsui Hark, 89) - Oct 21, 2014
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (Tsui Hark, 11) - Oct 29, 2014
My Lucky Star (Dennie Gordon, 13) - Nov 07, 2014

Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 (Johnnie To, 14) - Nov 15, 2014
The Eighth Happiness (Johnnie To, 88) - Nov 21, 2014
Aberdeen (Pang Ho-cheung, 14) - Dec 04, 2014
The Taking of Tiger Mountain (Tsui Hark, 14) - Jan 05, 2015
The True Story of Wong Fei-hung: Whiplash Snuffs the Candle Flame (Wu Peng, 49) - Jan 07, 2015

The Big Heat (Johnnie To, 88) - Jan 09, 2015
The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 83) - Mar 20, 2015
The Time to Live, The Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 85) - Mar 21, 2015
Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 86) - Mar 22, 2015
Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 98) - Mar 24, 2015

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 01) - Mar 27, 2015
Masked Avengers (Chang Cheh, 81) - Apr 11, 2015
Kung Fu Jungle (Teddy Chan, 14) - Apr 27, 2015
Temporary Family (Cheuk Wan-chi, 14) - May 14, 2015
A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 86) - Jun 26, 2015

Yes, Madam (Corey Yuen, 85) - Jul 02, 2015
Wild City (Ringo Lam, 15) - Jul 30, 2015
The Heroic Trio (Johnnie To, 93) - Aug 01, 2015
Project A and Project A 2 (Jackie Chan, 83 & 87) - Aug 02, 2015

Capsule Reviews:

Aces Go Places (Eric Tsang, 82) - Nov 21, 2013
The Contract (Michael Hui, 78) - Nov 27, 2013
All the Wrong Clues (...For the Right Solution) (Tsui Hark, 81) - Nov 27, 2013
Aces Go Places II (Eric Tsang, 83) - Nov 28, 2013
Love in a Fallen City (Ann Hui, 84) - Dec 01, 2013

The Killer (John Woo, 89) - Dec 01, 2013
An Autumn's Tale (Mabel Cheung, 87) - Dec 03, 2013
Aces Go Places III: Our Man from Bond Street (Tsui Hark, 84) - Dec 04, 2013
The Private Eyes (Michael Hui, 76) - Dec 05, 2013
All's Well, Ends Well (Clifton Ko, 92) - Dec 09, 2013

Aces Go Places IV: You Never Die Twice (Ringo Lam, 86) - Dec 11, 2013
Security Unlimited (Michael Hui, 81) - Dec 13, 2013
The Banquet (Tsui Hark et al, 91) - Dec 16, 2013
Aces Go Places V: The Terracotta Hit (Lau Kar-leung, 89) - Dec 19, 2013
Final Justice (Parkman Wong, 88) - Dec 19, 2013

In the Line of Duty 3 (Arthur Wong & Brandy Yuen, 88) - Dec 20, 2013
In the Line of Duty 4 (Yuen Woo-ping, 89) - Dec 20, 2013
Magnificent Warriors (David Chung, 87) - Dec 20, 2013
God of Gamblers (Wong Jing, 89) - Dec 23, 2013
All for the Winner (Jeffrey Lau & Corey Yuen, 90) - Dec 25, 2013

Casino Raiders (Wong Jing, Jimmy Heung & Corey Yuen, 89) - Dec 26, 2013
Tricky Brains (Wong Jing, 91) - Dec 26, 2013
God of Gamblers II (Wong Jing, 90) - Dec 27, 2013
The Romancing Star (Wong Jing, 87) - Dec 28, 2013
Boys are Easy (Wong Jing, 93) - Dec 30, 2013

Ninja in the Dragon's Den (Corey Yuen, 82) - Dec 30, 2013
Tiger Cage (Yuen Woo-ping, 88) - Jan 02, 2014
The Magic Crystal (Wong Jing, 86) - Jan 02, 2014
No Retreat, No Surrender (Corey Yuen, 86) - Jan 03, 2014
Rich and Famous (Taylor Wong, 88) - Jan 06, 2014

Games Gamblers Play (Michael Hui, 74) - Jan 07, 2014
Time and Tide (Tsui Hark, 00) - Mar 25, 2014
Tri Star (Tsui Hark, 96) - Apr 01, 2014
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 94) - Apr 01, 2014
Mission: Impossible II (John Woo, 00) - Apr 04, 2014

Double Team (Tsui Hark, 97) - Apr 04, 2014
Knock Off (Tsui Hark, 98) - Apr 07, 2014
A Moment of Romance (Benny Chan, 90) - Apr 15, 2014
Running on Karma (Johnnie To, 03) - Apr 22, 2014
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Tsui Hark, 10) - Apr 25, 2014

Chinese Odyssey 2002 (Jeffrey Lau, 02) - Apr 25, 2014
Motorway (Cheang Pou-soi, 12) - Apr 25, 2014
Fist of Fury (Lo Wei, 71) - May 02, 2014
The Dead and the Deadly (Wu Ma, 82) - May 02, 2014
The Sun Also Rises (Jiang Wen, 07) - May 05, 2014

Perhaps Love (Peter Chan, 05) - May 06, 2014
The Chinese Boxer (Jimmy Wang Yu, 70) - May 07, 2014
The Boxer from Shantung (Chang Cheh, 72) - May 09, 2014
The Sword (Jimmy Wang Yu, 71) - May 13, 2014

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (Andrew Lau, 10) - May 13, 2014
Legend of a Fighter (Yuen Woo-ping, 82) - May 13, 2014
Once Upon a Time in Shanghai (Wong Ching-po, 14) - May 28, 2014
The Singing Thief (Chang Cheh, 69) - Jun 01, 2014
Dead End (Chang Cheh, 69) - Jun 03, 2014

The Spiritual Boxer (Lau Kar-leung, 75) - Jun 06, 1014
Black Coal, Thin Ice (Diao Yinan, 14) - Jun 07, 2014
Challenge of the Masters (Lau Kar-leung, 76) - Jun 09, 2014
The Love Eterne (Li Han-hsiang, 63) - Jun 11, 2014
The Shadow Boxing (Lau Kar-leung, 79) - Jun 12, 2014

Cat vs. Rat (Lau Kar-leung, 82) - Jun 14, 2014
Heroes of the East (Lau Kar-leung, 78) - Jun 15, 2014
My Young Auntie (Lau Kar-leung, 81) - Jun 16, 2014
Shaolin Mantis (Lau Kar-leung, 78) - Jun 17, 2014
The Lady is the Boss (Lau Kar-leung, 83) - Jun 17, 2014

Martial Arts of Shaolin (Lau Kar-leung, 86) - Jun 18, 2014
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Lau Kar-leung, 78) - Jun 19, 2014
Drunken Master III (Lau Kar-leung, 94) - Jun 20, 2014
Tiger on the Beat 2 (Lau Kar-leung, 90) - Jun 20, 2014
The Dream of the Red Chamber (Li Han-hsiang, 77) - Jun 21, 2014

Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (Lau Kar-leung, 84) - Jun 21, 2014
Dirty Ho (Lau Kar-leung, 79) - Jun 22, 2014
Full Alert (Ringo Lam, 97) - Jul 24, 2014
Golden Chicken (Samson Chiu, 02) - Jul 25, 2014
Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang Wen, 00) - Jul 29, 2014

Summer Palace (Lou Ye, 06) - Jul 29, 2014
Empress Wu Zetian (Fang Peilin, 39) - Jul 29, 2014
The Enchanting Shadow (Li Han-hsiang, 60) - Jul 31, 2014
The Dream of the Red Chamber (Bu Wancang, 44) - Jul 31, 2014
The Story of Sue San (King Hu, 64) - Aug 04, 2014

Sons of the Good Earth (King Hu, 65) - Aug 05, 2014
House of Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou, 04) - Aug 06, 2014
The Fate of Lee Khan (King Hu, 73) - Aug 07, 2014
The Post-Modern Life of My Aunt (Ann Hui, 06) - Aug 12, 2014
Jade Goddess of Mercy (Ann Hui, 03) - Aug 13, 2014

Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 04) - Aug 13, 2014
20 30 40 (Sylvia Chang, 04) - Aug 14, 2014
Tempting Heart (Sylvia Chang, 99) - Aug 14, 2014
The Golden Era (Ann Hui, 14) - Sep 27, 2014
Uncertain Relationships Society (Heiward Mak, 14) - Sep 29, 2014

 The Midnight After (Fruit Chan, 14) - Oct 04, 2014
Love Battlefield (Soi Cheang, 04) - Oct 19, 2014
The Shopaholics (Wai Ka-fai, 06) - Oct 20, 2014
So Young (Zhou Wei, 13) - Oct 22, 2014
Beyond the Great Wall (Li Han-hsiang, 64) - Oct 23, 2014

The Death Curse (Soi Cheang, 04) - Oct 24, 2014
King of Comedy (Stephen Chow & Lee Lik-chi, 99) - Oct 25, 2014
Cocktail (Herman Yau & Long Ching, 06) - Oct 26, 2014
Fantasia (Wai Ka-fai, 04) - Oct 27, 2014
High Noon (Heiward Mak, 08) - Oct 27, 2014

Young and Dangerous (Andrew Lau, 96) - Nov 05, 2014
Exodus (Pang Ho-cheung, 07) - Nov 10, 2014
Anna Magdalena (Yee Chung-man, 98) - Nov 10, 2014
Project A (Jackie Chan, 1983) - Nov 11, 2014
Diva (Heiward Mak, 12) - Nov 15, 2014

The Monkey King (Soi Cheang, 14) - Nov 18, 2014
Flash Point (Wilson Yip, 07) - Nov 18, 2014
Unbeatable (Dante Lam, 13) - Nov 21, 2014
Golden Chickensss (Matt Chow, 14) - Dec 11, 2014
Uncertain Relationships Society (Heiward Mak, 14) - Dec 31, 2014

The Spring River Flows East (Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli, 47) - Jan 13, 2015
From Vegas to Macau (Wong Jing, 14) - Jan 17, 2015
Black Comedy (Wilson Chin, 14) - Feb 15, 2015
Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 05) - Mar 08, 2015
HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien (Olivier Assayas, 97) - Mar 12, 2015

The Sandwich Man (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 83) - Mar 13, 2015
Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 85) - Mar 15, 2015
The Terrorizers (Edward Yang, 86) - Mar 15, 2015
A Borrowed Life (Wu Nien-jen, 94) - Mar 16, 2015
Cute Girl (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 80) - Mar 18, 2015

Yes, Madam (Corey Yuen, 85) - Mar 24, 2015
Twin Dragons (Tsui Hark & Ringo Lam, 92) - Apr 14, 2015
Ballistic Kiss (Donnie Yen, 98) - Apr 27, 2015
Overheard (Alan Mak & Felix Chong, 09) - May 06, 2015
Overheard 2 (Alan Mak & Felix Chong, 11) - May 08, 2015

Let the Bullets Fly (Jiang Wen, 10) - May 14, 1015
The Coffin in the Mountain (Xin Yukun, 14) - May 22, 2015
Overheard 3 (Alan Mak & Felix Chong, 14) - May 29, 2015
Dearest (Peter Chan, 14) - May 29, 2015
Cave of the Spider Women (Dan Duyu, 27) - Jun 03, 2015

Cave of the Silken Web (Ho Meng-hua, 67) - Jun 03, 2015
The Chinese Mayor (Zhou Hao, 15) - Jun 07, 2015
Love in a Puff (Pang Ho-cheung, 10) - Jun 22, 2015
The East is Red (Ching Siu-ting & Raymond Lee, 93) - Jun 22, 2015
Temple of the Red Lotus (Hsu Tsung-hung, 65) - Jun 23, 2015

The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (Patrick Lung-kong, 67) - Jul 04, 2015

Podcasts:

The George Sanders Show Episode Twenty-Four: Crank and The Victim  Dec 15, 2013
They Shot Pictures #32: Lau Kar-leung  Jun 25, 2014
The George Sanders Show Episode 48: Renaldo & Clara, Masked & Anonymous and Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 - Nov 15, 2014
They Shot Pictures #34: King Hu  Nov 17, 2014
The George Sanders Show Episode 50: Coffy, Golden Chicken and 2014 Discoveries  Dec 13, 2014
The George Sanders Show Episode 59: The Clouds of Sils Maria and Centre Stage - May 2, 2015
The George Sanders Show Episode 63: Blackhat and A Better Tomorrow - Jun 29, 2015

Lists:

Running Out of Karma: Introduction


I've spent much of 2013 immersed in Hong Kong cinema. This summer, which I declared The Summer of Sammo, I watched over 80 Hong Kong films, covering the heyday of the Shaw Brothers through the New Wave of the 80s and 90s and into the present day, delving deep into the work of directors like Sammo Hung, Chor Yuen, Lau Kar-leung, Patrick Tam, Tsui Hark, King Hu and Chang Cheh. But my year in cinematic Hong Kong actually began a few months earlier, in February, when on a whim I rented a couple of Johnnie To movies I that hadn't yet seen. That led to more and more To rentals (along with a few other Hong Kong films I'd been meaning to check out), the purchase and actual reading of a pair of books (two events that rarely go together for me), and the recording of a Johnnie To podcast (They Shot Pictures #13). But I didn't do a whole lot of writing. I talked To on twitter and made some occasionally pithy comments on letterboxd, but unlike with the Summer of Sammo, for which I managed to produce 29 long reviews and three podcasts, I really don't have a whole lot to show for my time with To. So I'm setting myself the task of writing about each and every Johnnie To movie, in chronological order.

Johnnie To has never been more popular in the US than he is right now, on the heels of the reasonably successful release this summer of his 2012 film Drug War (it's yet to be seen if that will translate to an American release for his 2013 film Blind Detective). As more and more people discover his work, there's been an explosion in writing about him, at least in the various corners of the internet I seem to frequent. But while much of that writing has been terrific, and I welcome all efforts to introduce what I think is one of the greatest filmmakers working today to a wider audience, I remain disappointed in the lack of a clear, comprehensive overview of his work, one that attempts to describe him as an auteur, as a product of a national film tradition and as a maker of genre films. First and foremost such an approach must deal with all of the director's films, not just, as is most often the case with To, the films in the most familiar or lofty genres. Even a very good book like Stephen Teo's study of To's career focuses almost exclusively on his crime films while neglecting the romantic comedies that have made up a significant chunk of his output (as Teo himself readily points out: the book is called Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film) while barely covering the first 15 or so years of his career. I've read my fair share of books about film directors over the years, and I can't recall any that have had so much of their extant work so readily ignored. It's as if someone wrote about John Ford and dismissed his Westerns with a few stock phrases (as genre quickies, as works-for-hire, as films made to pay the bill for the movies he really wanted to make, which I guess in Ford's case would be highbrow literary adaptations like The Plough and the Stars or The Fugitive). Such an approach seems self-evidently non-sensical to me.


While a film like To's second feature, the goofy 1986 comedy Happy Ghost III, may not be the key to unlocking the mysteries of the Election series, or even show much of an auteurist "signature" at all, it nevertheless might have a lot to say about the state of the Hong Kong film industry in the mid-80s (the role of Tsui Hark and Raymond Wong's Cinema City studio, a subject ripe for a study of its own, for example). And the ways To navigated that climate, successfully or not, may tell us something about the approach he continues to take in running his own studio. And it may end up revealing something interesting about the auteur after all. One of my goals of this project, in fact, is to demonstrate just how vital the romantic comedies are to To's work, how they connect both thematically and stylistically with the "edgier" crime melodramas on which his reputation in the US almost exclusively rests. This was the goal of our They Shot Pictures episode: to develop and present a Grand Unified Theory of Johnnie To, and now I hope to put it in writing.

Additionally, just as I found that Sammo Hung could not be understood in isolation  and needed to be put in context, which meant exploring the films and filmmakers that influenced him as well as his predecessors and contemporaries, I hope to do the same with Johnnie To. To that end, not only am I hoping to watch and write about all of To's films, I plan to continue to explore the last 30-plus years of Hong Kong cinema, to better place him in context and present a fuller picture of the world in which he works. So directors of To's generation such as John Woo, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark, Ching Siu-tung, Corey Yuen, Wong Kar-wai, Stanley Kwan and Ann Hui will be covered here, as will newer generations of directors that may have been influenced by him, both in Hong Kong and around the world.

One of the great paradoxes of cinephilia is that the more movies you watch, the more movies there are that you want to watch; the more you see, the more you realize how much there is you haven't seen yet. In that way, a project like this is never ending. So I might as well get started.

Next up: Running Out of Karma: Index