San ren xing

Watching the new Johnny To films has become a duty. It looks like WHERE A GOOD MAN GOES and MAD DETECTIVE are going to be the best we get out of him but his new film THREE intrigues.

For a movie enthusiast it can be seen as the heir to the great Hong Kong kung fu films. It's a cop movie set in the emergency ward of Victoria Hospital. After some gory close ups of drilling into skulls in the operating room, we move into the plot with shot criminal Wallace Chung being wheeled into Emergency handcuffed to his gurney.

Dr. Vickie Wei Zhao (SHAOLIN SOCCER, RED CLIFF)is already under fire from a patient after her operation left him paralyzed. He spits on her and calls her "Rubbish Doctor" and her success rate doesn't improve. She's at odds with To regular, stony faced police officer Louis Koo, who she feels is treating Chung inhumanely. Doctor and cop get into conflict over Chung's demand for the 'phone call that he is entitled too, with the patient quoting The Hippocratic Oath to her (in English) - good scene.

While this is happening, the crazy in the next bed gets away from his restraints complaining about his treatment, cop Lam Suet is trying to find the conspirator-suit who whistles classical music and the key to his hand cuffs is missing.

Finale is a large scale shoot out in slow motion - impressive moment when the moving camera comes through the ward doors and the action switches to normal speed and the sound of gunfire and panic.

The ending strips away most of the undertaking's dignity but by then there's been enough kinetic action to more than satisfy the target audience.

Cornered gang leader Shun (Wallace Chung) manages to get himself shot by the police so he can bide his time in a hospital until his cohorts are able to rescue him. Dr. Tong Qian (Zhao Wei) tries to convince him to have the bullet in his head removed. Chief Inspector Ken Chan (Louis Koo) tries to get information from him about his gang members, hoping to capture all of them.

Being squeamish about violence, I try to avoid movies like this; I just watched this for Wallace. But I found the interplay among the three protagonists interesting enough to hang on. It helped that the movie is well directed and acted.

Surgeon Wei Zhao hasn't lost her patient, but the surgery has left him paralyzed. She tells him that recovery often takes more time, but he spits at her. Privately she feels it's all on her. Meanwhile, policeman Louis Koo brings in Wallace Chung, a robber who has a bullet lodged in his brain. Occasionally he has seizures. Occasionally, his nose bleeds. Koo has the hospital floor filled with undercover police officers, guarding against an attempt to break Chung out. But Chung keeps grinning. Who has control?

Johnny To's movie is about control, and people with the illusion that they have it. Like others of his movies, he deliberately chooses a confined space, a limited color palette, and large swaths of black to vary the size of his frame, while we wait for the chaos of a desperate fight to break out. Unlike others of his movies, his themes don't creep up on the audience gradually, they are revealed early, and the answers likewise.

People say going to the hospital is a risk in itself, perhaps in not quite the high style and carnage as on display here.

The film lightly pits the Hippocratic oath vs hypocritical cops, toss in a charismatic villain and a few cc's of humor to help temporarily release the tension, but you know what's coming in even if you are not an action film aficionado.

I am not one but this film killed time in a tick-tock fashion. Korea may outdo the US on violence and weird worship of homicidal psychopaths, that's okay by me.

The logic of plot setting is too bad. Every character seems to explain clearly, but in fact it is a model play. For example: the bandits quote the classics in a large section, and the people who laugh at nothing assume who is drunk to come up with it. The whole plot is not clear, and the operation lens is a waste of Cass. The final slow-motion gun battle and the soundtrack destroyed the harsh feeling of the climax of the bandit film.