Feng zai qi shi

Where the Wind Blows is a big-budgeted arthouse crime epic that is a love letter to Hong Kong and its history. Aaron Kwok and Tony Leung deliver charismatic performances as Lui Lok and Lam Kong, two of the four corrupt police commissioners in Hong Kong, spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s. It's an ambitious film with a big gushing heart and has much to say about Hong Kong but struggles with conveying it all succinctly.

Through a romantic nostalgic lens, director Phillip Yung directs the film like a set of glossy nostalgic postcards, featuring snapshots of Hong Kong in each decade, from the Japanese occupation to poverty to its stability and eventual flourish. The production design, costumes, and music exquisitely pop off the screen.

Structured like a kaleidoscopic collage, the story follows the Lui Lok and Lam Kong characters through the historical timeline, covering history, politics, and the romantic relationships with their wives. It is epic through its 50-year span and intimate through its use of voice-overs and flashbacks.

It reminded me of Martin Scorsese's Casino at times, where we intimately live inside the characters' heads, privy to their innermost thoughts.

Aaron Kwok does a great job reimagining Lui Lok as a straight-faced, tap-dancing romantic hero with an insatiable drive. Kwok naturally projects an eagerness, which he precisely tones down to fit Phillip Yung's idealistic vision. The real Lui Lok was likely closer to Francis Ng's rough-hewn portrayal from Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong.

Tony Leung is charming and understated as the debonair piano-playing Lam Kong. His character is often off-the-side and soft-spoken, but it was impressive how much Leung was still conveying from doing so little. Phillip Yung devotes a lot of screen time to developing Lui Lok and Lam Kong; the contrast is what hooked me throughout the whole movie.

While I enjoyed Du Juan's performance as Choi Chan, Lui Lok's wife, the subplot about her helping him behind the scenes undermines what the real-life Lui Lok achieved by systemizing bribery in the 60s.

There's a lot of praise behind comedian Michael Hui's role as an ICAC agent. The performance is not bad but I was more moved by the speech itself. My take is Hong Kong audiences just miss seeing Hui onscreen.

All that said, Where the Wind Blows is convoluted and overloaded. At 2 hours and 44 minutes, even with fast-paced editing, there's too much information to take in. There's a crucial plot point where the four police commissioners have a disagreement that is murky and unclear. Plot threads are connected in ways that are unexpected and it gets challenging keeping up with them all.

Audiences going in with the expectations of a linear traditional crime epic will leave disappointed by a lack of guns blazing in the finale. It's not the Godfather, nor is it Infernal Affairs.

This is Phillip Yung paying a loving tribute to Hong Kong and its history, as if to say, "Look how far we've come." That Hong Kong sentiment is heartfelt. I enjoyed being in Phillip Yung's Hong Kong as a romanticized memory. Yung is not showing how events happened, but rather how we'd ideally remember it as a collective dream.

Where the Wind Blows requires a second viewing. There's still so much to unpack and it was a dense history lesson. The film will have a better chance of finding its audience through streaming where it has the benefit of being paused, rewound, and rewatched. I suspect I'll like it, even more, the second time.

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 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.

7.5 /10 rating. Original title is Theory of Ambitions, Crime drama set in Hong Kong spanning 1960's to 80's.

Tony Leung, Aaron Kwok, Richard Ng are the big names here in this really well acted and tough film about police corruption, set in British controlled Hong kong, back in the day. Everyone is dirty, they try their hardest to keep things in order, amongst them selves, along with the British, and the crime gangs- The Triads.

Things get very messy, as drug lords try assert control and even the cops do try to do their jobs, law and order is not an easy game with so much at stake here. The wives do their fair share of power games and violence breaks out with guns and knives. Things, after a time ruin family life and spiral out of control on the streets and the offices.

Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok are the corrupt cops play cat and mouse with each other, but have a respect with each other. But the fallout is coming at some point.

A well told true story about a time of Hong kong where who had power, is anybodies guess?

Where the Wind Blows boasts two super stars in Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok, but it is a total snooze fest at 2h 24min. The story is about a few good men in a sea of dirty cops and politicians. The storytelling is so choppy that after a while you will feel like puking out all the rubbish history lessons forced down your throat. It is well-acted no doubt but the story is not even coherent. It's like in any scene there is a beginning, a middle and an ending, but the director will just show you one out of the three and wants you to connect the dots. Such an utter waste of good actors. The moral lesson is that you should be the baddest bad guy because you can retire to Canada or Thailand and nothing will happen to you. Avoid this like it's the newest variant of COVID-19.