Accident

Accident's trailer gives a promising setup of a thriller focused on a team of assassins who make their killings look like accidents, but there's no follow through. Thrilling this is not, especially when you start to get into the grind of just how many niggling details have to be accounted for to make a death believable as an accident and how many things have to come together in the right way and at the right time or the whole thing has to be called off and back to the drawing board.

The movie might at least be intellectually interesting, but nothing is particularly believable or smart (the film is only capable of telling us Louis Koo's character is a genius rather than showing us) and there's minimal plot, dialog, or character interaction. Questions that should be asked aren't. Questions that no one really cares about are lingered on too long. Louis Koo plays the main character, Brain, dominating the screen time, and the disappearance of each of the other capable actors, none of whom are around for long, is keenly felt. I've seen Koo give some fine performances, but here he must spend most of the movie alone and silent, with no one to play off of, which is a tall order for any actor, even if they have a stellar script, which Accident most certainly does not. The silence also conveniently leaves out the need for the film to flesh out Brain's theories and what he's thinking and we're just left to guess--perhaps the director thought this would be a clever style because it would put the audience in the same mindset as the main character, but it just put me in the mindset of wanting to go to sleep.

With the main character being a stony hired killer, there's no one to root for, and it doesn't take too many lingering shots of Brain furrowing his brow to convey the wheels of his genius brain are turning while conducting surveillance of mundane events until you stop caring. Slogging through to the ending adds little, so you might as well just move on when the boredom gets intense. There's really not any "twist" at the end that redeems things, as some reviewers try to make out; I don't know if the film's creators really even intended there to be. If you're "blown away" by the ending, either you haven't seen many movies of this sort, or you should probably consider yourself a pretty thick.

Accident is just another triumph of atmosphere over substance that relies on cheap tricks to bypass viewers' ability to think critically about the weaknesses of the script by implying things that never materialize and various other manipulations that leave you feeling used at the end when it becomes apparent that the things you had to forgive in the hope that this was leading somewhere have led nowhere worth going. Overheard (2009), also with Koo (and Ching Wan Lau and Daniel Wu), comes to mind as an example of a better surveillance-themed movie.

Accident might just be the most refined and intelligent piece of Hong Kong cinema since 2002's Infernal Affairs. The film probably won't prove as popular with mainstream audiences due to its almost meditative, slow-burn pacing - but for anyone with an interest in inventive genre cinema, Soi Cheang's newest outing is a must-see.

Taking its cues from Jean-Pierre Melville, Accident revolves around a group of assassins who stage their murders like accidents. The group is led by Brain (Louis Koo in a career-defining performance), who grows increasingly paranoid when one of the group's accidents goes awry and kills another member.

Thankfully, while the actual "accidents" are impressive and cleverly put together, Soi Cheang doesn't make the mistake of letting gimmicky set pieces dominate his film. Instead, Accident becomes a fascinating character study of a man who gradually destroys himself through paranoia and guilt. As such, the film largely depends on Louis Koo's performance - and what a performance it is; with this film, Koo finally deserves to be elevated from the hotpot of mediocre HK-popstars-cum-actors people used to include him in.

Add to this an elegiac score by Xavier Jamaux, elegant cinematography and you end up with the most compelling film to come out of Asia in the past 2 years.

If there is any problem to be found in this, it's that Accident is purely a Milkyway Image film, not a Soi Cheang film. Anyone hoping to find the director's trademark relentlessness here will be disappointed - although it could be argued some of the nihilism found in works like Dog Bite Dog was carried over into Accident's finale.

I'm not sure what to make of this movie. It's not a long film, and so repeat viewings may make people appreciate its intricacies more. The film revolves around a small tight-knit group of assassins who work by killing their victims in ways that would appear to have been purely an accident, the "accident" being decidedly gruesome once executed.

Led diligently by a straight-forward highly intelligent man they call "Brains", they work to ensure no trace can lead the deaths to themselves. When the tables are turned and a member is killed, the focus closes on "Brain" who struggles to find out what has happened and gone wrong, and who is out to get them.

It's a moody film and uses the claustrophobic HK atmosphere well. One problem is that it's hard to decipher all that is happening from one viewing. It can get ponderous and confusing. The acting is generally very good and the action of the deaths very well done, but it doesn't compensate for the lack of clarity. Then again maybe it wasn't meant to be a tidy film and that is the point.

Overall, I thought it was okay and interesting enough. Maybe with some more work and time on the script then it could have become far better. Not bad, but just not great.

A paid killer kills the target with the help of his team and make it looks like accident..at one stage he face the bad situation and tries to getrid of it.. Must watch movie..!!

I honestly wanted to like this one, it is somewhat moody and slow and ponderous, which I normally don't mind if it is done well. Take David Lynch for example, to whom this movie is likened... Now he does that kind of thing probably better than anyone else I feel because he reaches right down deep into the subconscious, and even though one might not consciously understand exactly what is going on, there IS indeed a powerful atmosphere and you do really feel a tugging at your subconscious which can affect you rather deeply.

BUT... this movie here sort of tries to do that. Technically, it is put together really well, and the acting is fine. Even the basic idea of this special group who arranges 'Accidents' is intriguing. Unfortunately though, in my lowly and wretched opinion, there just isn't enough true substance behind it. Or... if it had even half of the kind of deep atmosphere that Lynch can create, then this could have worked better as more of an 'Art' film. But, I honestly feel that it simply just doesn't have enough going on to do that.

I usually don't mind 'Slow'... But, this one is really, REALLY SLOW, but without any underlying mood or strong enough vibe to make it truly interesting. Yes, the story and plot ultimately are quite good, and the running time most thankfully isn't drawn out unnecessarily which I feel would indeed have made it quite a bit worse. BUT... when all is said and done it really just comes across as very slight and I'm sure more superficial than the filmmakers intended.

There just is not enough characterization to interest you in the people. And, there also is simply not enough going on surrounding the intriguing concept I feel ultimately to make it truly satisfying or honestly in any way really entertaining. Just not much 'there' there...

So, I can see how some might be able to 'tune in' to the VERY mild and extremely understated vibe here and possibly enjoy it more so. But, to me the bottom line is that if you are going to make a story that is this extremely slow and somewhat mysterious, you absolutely HAVE to have more going on, at least in creating a substantial, palpable mood of some kind in order to justify the rather slight things that are happening on the actual screen.

So, yeah, because of what I felt was a pretty strong deficit in the result, despite a very intriguing idea, I really could only give this a '5' It wasn't awful, but I truly think it will leave many feeling like there is nothing much really there when it is over...