Feng zai qi shi

Extraordinary casting with incredibly accurate production design but...

This is by far the most humiliating, disrespectful, disgusting Hong Kong film that I have ever seen. Politically the director has chosen to twist the history of what had actually happened during and after the world war. Accusing Kuomingtan to cause the riots during 50s-60s instead of the communist party who actually caused it. This director and production is so afraid of the CCP now that they decided to change the history with the silly movie that they have shot.

Despite all the historical non sense. This movie is so unbearable and hard to watch. It's a disgrace of the Hong Kong film industry. Waste of talents, waste of resources, waste of audience's patience's and time. Plain rubbish.

The premiss of this cop drama is quite promising. It depicts a scenario in which the dedication of the few honest officers amongst Hong Kong's colonial police have to combat both their own crooked comrades as well as the increasingly powerful Triad gangs that are gradually overrunning the place - to the extent that the British might have to send in their troops to restore law and order. What also complicates the story is that both "Nam Kong" (Tony Leung) and "Lui Lok" (Aaron Kwok) are aspirational policemen who are prepared to use whatever it takes to get on - and that, coupled with the equally ambitious attitudes of their wives, means that they are just as corrupt and devious as those they are purporting to be trying to control. The thing with this drama is it's pace. It takes far, far, too long to get going with way too little action or intrigue until well into the second hour, by which time I was starting to wriggle in my seat. There's an inevitability about the whole story thereafter and Philip Yung just doesn't manage to create characters about whom I could care less. The whole honour code/triad criminality plot is largely neglected in favour of an half-hearted, semi-westernised, crime thriller that really is distinctly lacking in thrills and that is just too long. It meandered and rambled too much for me with much to much dialogue and nowhere near enough focus on what could have been a really good hybrid-culture, political, adventure. It's OK, watchable, but really nothing more.

I don't know, but why does Hong Kong always make these crime films? It's been over done so many many times why can't they take note from Korean Cinema? These Hong Kong crime drama is such an old genre that nobody watches any more. They over done it and it's becoming boring typical of Hong Kong to make these kind of crime films which nobody really cares for. Why waste good talent with these films. I'm serious, every film coming out of Hong Kong and China has just been really stale. The ideas are stale and the this film is stale. I wish they rethink about their way of filmmaking. The next wave is Korean cinema which is refreshing and full of surprises. I hope they learn a lesson from it! Stop making pointless cop drams that nobody watches or cares about!!!

I know many people came to see this movie because of the two big stars, Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok, and that's completely understandable. Both male leads still have their charisma and have portrayed the detective's hardships and glory very convincingly. However, I highly recommend everyone to pay close attention to the performance of the female lead, played by Du Juan. She truly shines and takes the audience back to the old Hong Kong era. In the past, men needed women to take care of all aspects of their lives in order to look good in public, even if it meant eliminating adversaries. Du Juan's charm and tactics are portrayed excellently, giving a performance that rivals her previous collaboration with Tony Leung's Tang Wei. Aside from the familiar story, the acting prowess of these big stars is something I highly recommend to everyone.

Most of the time, Hk movies that are financed elsewhere has a two dimensional problem. They look good, damn good. And with big stars. International stars at that.

But that's it. In this case, a possibly 12 hr miNi series cut to 2.5 hrs. So editing chops the story to bits and pieces. Feels like shot by 2-3 2nd unit directors and then multi edited. The plot is too sprawling, ambitious, yet also too condensed for its own good.

The dancing attributes are just tailor made for Aaron.

Dancing doesn't make sense to this kind of story. Mixed genre here doesn't jive. The rhythm to the speeches, dialogue, monologue scenes for Tony seemed very off, rushed, one take-ish, had no drama, no underlying thoughts.

The camera wants to be romantic and stays between 85mm to 180mm. Very distracting, some obviously can be seen as homage/copying old Tony Leung's movies.

All body, not content. All show and no depth. Walked off around 45min mark.