PTU (Police Tactical Unit)

I'm convinced that much of film is reverberation from the phenomenon of noir. The key element of noir was a capricious fate that both played arbitrary havoc with lives and flavored the eye of the camera.

I am not thoroughly steeped in Hong Kong work, but there seem to be three main communities: the deeply cinematic experimentalists led by Kar-wai, the stylistic ballet of Woo and company and the neo-noirists. Unfortunately, these can superficially appear similar in many respects. But I think here we have a clear case of the third.

The game is dark. Everyone seems to think they are in charge, but no one is. Luck plays the key role and many coincidences appear. The camera eye is based on the long lens.

I'm beginning to appreciate cinematographers who exploit either the long or short lens. I think it is impossible to do noir with a short lens because it is so obvious that the eye is within the space of action. But few noir films go so far, so long as this one.

Forget the story, which is only to convey the accidents and lack of control (except for the central scene where one character tries to get another to rub a tattoo off his neck). And forget the characters; they are just tokens borrowed from other movies. Just revel in the philosophy here: why does a world exist where everything is a matter of chance, but you as the viewer always, always happen to be in the right place to see everything?

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

PTU is undoubtly one of To's best work to date, to me, it's as good as The Mission, with a more developed Johny To touch in it. and for me the best John To film has to be Running Out Of Time. i'd like to point out that PTU is a Johny To's "personal" work, meaning that it's solely produced and distributed by his own production company - MilkyWay Image, and there have only been 2 other movies that are considered Milkyway Image films, or Johny To's personal works, one is 1999's Running Out Of Time, and one is The Misson, he's stated that he'd only make one in about every 3 years(numerous times), in his career he's done a lot of movies, but they are mostly block busters. so if you are interested in other movies by him, just know that they are not really the kind of movies he want to make.

I saw a screening of PTU at UCLA tonight, with the director (and his translator) in attendance. I found the film to be a bit slow in spots, but I was willing to go along with the deliberate pace and slow burn of the film. I think in this country we're way too spoiled on visual chaos, with most studio films thrusting a car chase or a slapstick joke in our face every two minutes or so. It doesn't have to be that way. The film was shot beautifully and there is a quiet cool about the whole thing, very reminiscent of a Lee Marvin vibe as someone else here pointed out.

To did stay to answer questions after the movie, and although this did not alter my opinion of the film it did make me appreciate it even more. It was shot over the course of two years, while he would stop to make other commercial films; some actors gain or lose weight on screen! The budget only came out to $400k U.S. Several of the actors were actually crew people from his other films. One person asked him how he made his cinematography choices (i.e. the constant pools of light) and he laughed and said it was strictly budgetary; they couldn't afford to dress every set and they only had a few overhead lights, so voila! I think the limitations of what they had to work with only make the film stronger, much like Jaws is a better movie because the shark always broke down.

A police captain assigns his unit to help a colleague retrieve his gun, lost in an altercation with a street-gang, before a reporting deadline expires.

Just as much as the style and the look, it's the choreography and orchestration - and the way To shuffles the characters and objects about on his late-night chessboard; and the sound-scapes, in addition to the glorious night-lit streets and skyline which delight almost to the extent that the opening restaurant confrontational, ultimately tragic, musical chairs and climactic set-piece shoot-out serve as mere book-ends for what comes between. Or even, as brief irritants.

The characters don't particularly matter either - although there are some particularly wonderful-looking villains - because they're all just pawns for this visual, and aural feast.

You've seen plenty of tyre-squealer car-chases - maybe you've seen too many of them; To's come up with a new angle: the cars that glide at intervals through city streets, unobtrusively, apparently disinterestedly, and almost noiselessly - perhaps just to get you thinking "now I wonder what they're up to'? A crime film where all the cars keep within the speed limit? Shurely shome mishtake?

And then there's the kid on the bicycle: by the time of his third sighting you're wondering is he a midget gang member, or undercover cop - or afterhours drugs mule, even; and will it be his fate to be ripped apart with bullets, by all sides? How cruel could that be, for somebody so young? It's all about building tension, and keeping you on edge - or maybe filling in the spaces on that chessboard.

There are some great scenes and ideas, too - of course: as with that opening restaurant scene where various customers get re-assigned according to their place in the hierarchy, and phone messages that we only later become privy to, have fatal consequences. Then there's the tense confrontational scene in the video-game arcade, with the array of flashing video screens vieing for our attention with a synchronised symphony of unanswered cell-phones; and there's the men in cages, bent over almost triple.

Thematically, it reminds me of Kurosawa's 'Stray Dog' - and there may have been more than one scene of that classic referenced; visually; and to a certain extent narrative-wise, it reminded me of Scorsese's 'After Hours'. The boy on the bicycle reminded me of the boy in 'The Third Man', and also of 'M'. But these were only in passing: To obviously has his influences, but his style is all his own. And, sometimes, style matters.

This Hong Kong policier is a classic of its kind, a technically updated version of what America has not produced in fifty years. Lloyd Nolan or Lee Marvin could walk on at any time. Tough cops and tough criminals beat each other up without whining. It is ultra cool and thoroughly enjoyable without asking any earth-shattering questions. The only way to not like it is to not like the genre.