Dap huet cam mui

Nominated for 8 Golden Horse Awards and it is HK's entry for the Best Foreign Film Award, but seriously I don't get what the hullabaloo is about. Let me count the ways it failed - unevenly paced, oddly edited, directed without clarity, unnecessary fractured timelines, characters feel like walking enigmas. Only they know what they are doing. I didn't care for anyone. I think it is a veiled attempt at social commentary about the state of lonely youths in HK but the characters are not drawn well. The movie does not strive on suspense and we know who the murderer is pretty soon. The film then delves into their motivations but as far as I can tell every character is only painted with one identifiable trait. Getting Aaron Kwok here to be driving force is a waste of talent and I can't understand what's the point of him taking Polaroids and playing that damn kendama toy. I hate it when filmmakers do these dumb stuff and expect us to derive a deep reason about it. Scene to scene, the transitions feel unwieldy. Sometimes odd characters parachute in to pay some lip service and suggest some depth. Yawn! And I hate it when there are false endings. I think there are 3 here. It felt like it didn't want to end.

I do like Christopher Doyle's cinematography in that he refuses to pick up anything glamorous about HK. Jessie Li and Michael Ning as the killed and killer are laudable. Finally the movie doesn't shy away from some grisly gore. Something I don't see often in HK movies.

PS - I googled the actual case which is just grisly. A 16-year-old girl got chop into pieces by a 24-year-old man. Go wiki Wong Ka Mui

PORT OF CALL is based on the true event in Hong Kong about a grisly body-dismembered homicide of a 16-year-old girl Jiamei (Li, a stunner in her first film role with a greatly affecting performance juggling evenly with emotional range and starlet innocence), directed by indigenous new blood Philip Yung, his third feature. The film was a major contender in 2015 Golden Horse Film Festival (9 nominations with only 1 win), and consecutively took home 7 awards out of 13 nominations in 2016 Hong Kong Film Awards (a slam dunk of 5 acting categories apart from Yung's screenplay and the legendary cinematographer Doyle).

The story takes two main paralleled narratives interweaving within each other, one is centered on Jiamei before her startling demise, a mainland Chinese girl who arrives in Hong Kong to live with her mother May (Jin) and stepfather (Tam Ping-man), she is identified as those immigrants who fantasize a new life and fortune in this economic hub, Jiamei aims to be model like most comely young girls, but she finds that dream has become ever volatile because the challenge of merging herself into Hong Kong's metropolitan mores is so testing, it is not just about speaking fluent Cantonese, it is everything that surrounds her strapped life, thus, out of expediency, she chooses to become a call girl, to earn fast money and maybe she still has a chance to find someone who will honestly reciprocate her feelings, which doesn't happen in her case, hurt, jaded and disillusioned, she meets another client Tsz-Chung (Ning, a theatrical hand in his film debut), a corpulent delivery driver whose own misanthropic personality has its deeply discomforting trajectory, then Jiamei's story reaches its premature coda out of her own will. Yung truly takes no prisoners in expounding the macabre minutiae of the procedures of the dismemberment through Ning's superbly engrossing narration, imparted with astounding gravitas and foregrounded by the subliminally pervading susurrus soundtrack by indie musician Ding Ke. Jiamei and Tsz-Chung completely shatter the stereotype of victim and predator, two equally lonely souls have no way out in an increasingly materialistic world.

The cynosure of the other narrative bifurcation is Detective Chong (Kwok), who is investigating the murder case with his sidekick Smokey (Patrick Tam), consoles a grief-ridden May (Elaine Jin is an endearing marvel to behold) and wonders the motivation behind the crime, Yung doesn't choose to propel the story as a gripping whodunit, Tsz-Chung turns himself in to the police in the early stage of the interlacing storyline.

Chong's backstory is obviously less lurid in comparison, a divorcé but still keeps amicable relations with his ex (Leung) and daughter, habitually asks others to take photos of him in the crime scene for his own collection, and collapses in his sinking-too-deep involvement of Jiamei's fate. A salt- and-pepper Kwok finally decides to enact a character reflecting his real age on the screen, he was almost 50 when making the film and has been mostly admired for his good-looks and ever-so- young physiognomy, there is an in-joke between Chong and his superior Madam Law (Shiu), when the latter teases him that his skin starts to become flabby, so he orders a facial-tightening product consequentially.

That is the only light touch in this granted perturbing social critique of Hong Kong's underbelly among those in the lower rung, which also rams home its message of the discrepancy between those born in HK and those who are relocated, the former priggishly looks down on the latter whereas the latter desperately emulates the former in order to cash in any possible financial reward in that fertile land. Indeed, the reality is bleak and the gap seemingly irreconcilable, PORT OF CALL might cash in a tad on the tabloid nature of its source story, but at least it rounds off as a contemplating and piquant contemporary urban horror, without any pretentious frills to make itself easier to digest for a wide audience, a true cineaste treat from a place where its own identity is currently experiencing a substantial reconstruction and its cinematic soil is in dire demand of inspiration and integrity.

In Cantonese, Mandarin and bits of English. Set in Hong Kong. Based on an actual event.

Contains a strong plot and a somewhat over long narration.

The first part covers the discovery of the crime and the police investigation. The second part tells the story of the 'victim'. The third part unravels the motivation. Horrifying and sad, but gives closure to the detective (Aaron Kwok).

Good human interest story without the psychoanalysis. Aaron Kwok plays an eccentric detective. Fine performances from the young cast; Jessie Lin and Michael Ning.

Warning: It's for an adult audience. Some steamy sex scenes and gore.

"Port of Call" is a thriller definitely not for everybody, it walks a very fragile line of uncomfortable vices. The approach is done as realistically as possible with crude language and plenty of outright yelling. The scenes are not grand thriller, it's muddied yet invitingly dark, though slightly hampered by odd burst in the pacing.

The movie, on the surface, is a story about certain crime investigation. A young girl is missing and a detective digs into her life and associates. The more he uncovers the more secrets this young lady harbored, soon it's a one way trip into drugs and murder. One strangely twisted beautiful thing about this is how the story of the woman, her concerned and hopes, is told after the crime.

It's an intimately gripping thriller, and the risqué parts are done with finesse, but it might deter the audience with the hectic pace. Transition between investigation and the past can overlap as the movie is divided into chapters, which in turns reveal particular people's connection and aspects of their lives.

This can be dauntingly diverse since the information overload is felt throughout and the shift occurs very fast. It's as though several jigsaw puzzles are thrown in random order, it may fit eventually but it's likely to confuse audience early on. It's not intended for a cerebral crime and more of one with passion.

There's ample of human drama and struggle in "port of Call", admittedly it's engagingly dark, however an occasional plodding sidetrack might be too distracting for the investigation viewpoint.

Incoreherent and Dull are two words that describe this cinematic disaster.

With Aaron Kwok on the cover (I'm a fan!) and having read the back, I was convinced that Port of Call was well worth the rental. I was wrong.

Based on a real-life case, a detective (Kwok) investigates the presumed murder of a teenage prostitute. By this, I mean that a boat-load of blood has been found - which matches the DNA of a missing girl - but no body... any and all suspense then goes out the window as some bloke strolls into a police station and admits his guilt.

With an excellent DoP and a case that supposedly gripped Hong Kong, I can see why Kwok got involved - hell, maybe the screenplay was decent too? But the end result (perhaps the director's or editor's fault?) is a heavily disjointed mishmash of scenes, none of which hold much dramatic value nor build any of the cast's characters. I honestly tried hard to like the film but it's an almost empty attempt at - what? Being arty? Trying to say something the bland characters cannot spell out? - that after an hour, I couldn't suffer it any more... and with so many films in my To Watch pile and so little time, I can ill-afford wasting a full 90 minutes on what it so obviously a stinker.

And that's my advice to you all too: avoid.