Accident

if you like Johnnie's movies, this should be among your list remarkably, this movie is shot with only few characters but to an excellent portrayal not much talking with most of expression & meaning conveyed just by eye or facial movement

the curiosity & intense is able to get you focus through the entire movie unexpected death scenes much alike to the final destinations fame gives it extra entertainment

it's been quite some time we have enjoyed great hong Kong films since infernal affairs & exiled go watch it (definitely better than vengeance)

This film is underrated. Oh well, not every movie can be made by Marvel.

This film is about a professional hit-man and his team of self-styled "accident choreographers", who kill their victims by trapping them in well crafted "accidents" that look like unfortunate mishaps but are in fact perfectly staged acts of murder. He is consistently plagued by guilt, and the memories of his recently lost wife don't make things any easier. Even worse, one of his team members dies in an apparent "accident", which forces him to stay one step ahead of their competition.

One important thing that you need to understand about "Accident" is that it's a non-stop exhibition of paranoia because the scriptwriting is first-class as it straddles the line between chance and intent through a number of events that may signify an orchestrated murder by another party. The way this works is that some events are immediately shown to be acts of human intent – for example, the opening scene is clearly shown to be a murder that is made to look like an accident – but other events are left ambiguous, and you're not sure if it's an act of human intent or a moment of coincidence (or chance). So you're placed in the same situation as the protagonist because he's also not sure. And that's really the foundation of the entire movie, and it's a solid foundation to stand on.

It may be a surprise to you that the story moves slowly, but this could be considered a positive because it allows the paranoia to take center stage and it focuses a lot on developing the main character. The entire film revolves around this guy, making this just as much of a character piece as it is a series of suspense sequences. With that said, the "accidents" themselves are very cool and the direction is top notch. This was actually directed by Pou-Soi Cheang, and "Accident" was his best film in his filmography up to this point – representing an improvement over his previous titles. And I still think this is his best work, despite the fact that he has given us some very entertaining stuff between 2009 and the present day (such as "SPL 2: A Time for Consequences", "The Monkey King 2", and "Motorway").

The lead actor is Louis Koo, who earlier in his career appeared in a bunch of the "Troublesome Night" movies. Most fortunately, his roles subsequent to that franchise were far more reliable and entertaining. He's definitely an actor whose filmography is worth exploring because he's been in a lot of good movies. "Accident" is one of them, and I really liked his performance in this. It's a bit on the eccentric and gloomy side, but that's important for his character.

I definitely recommend "Accident", which is one of the better slow-burn suspense thrillers in recent memory. It is widely available on DVD, so be sure to check this one out.

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.

With an intense score from Xavier Jamaux (who has done a few films for Milkyway Productions), and stunning cinematography from Edmond Fung - who incidentally shot the fantastic Dog Bite Dog, and Shamo, for director Cheang - you can't help but get drawn into the film, even with its slow-burning pace.

Accident is like watching a regular Johnnie To flick, but with an added darkness as director Soi Cheang harks back to his earlier films (mentioned above) to bring us an often intense, violent and dark thriller that - in my opinion - is quite underrated!

Louis Koo plays the Brain (literally) of a small but covert team of assassins who get paid to take out people, all while making it look like an accident. It may sound simple, but the team go to some lengths in their planning to pull of some convincing accidents that makes Death from Final Destination seem like a 60's Bond villain...

Of course, as a viewer, this means stretching the imagination a little as some of the plans rely on coincidences and chance to work. But not to a ridiculous degree, and of course at the end of the day - its just a film.

With some incredible, atmospheric night scenes in floods of rain, the film starts to take a turn for the worse as plans start to go wrong, and Brain's paranoia kicks in believing that he is now under threat - a victim to someone else's planning...

I don't want to give too much more away really, but Accident is most definitely worth the watch. Louis Koo gives a great performance as Brain, as does everyone else in their roles to be honest. It was great to see Stanley Fung (the Lucky Stars series) back in such a serious role. While he has been appearing in many films over the years, I definitely think this is one of his finest roles that saw him nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards.

While it may have its flaws and is not supposed to be the kind of film that leaves you feeling happy, Accident is well worth the watch and should definitely have gained more international attention with Hong Kong film fans!

Overall: A tense, atmospheric thriller, beautifully shot with an amazing score and performances from all involved!

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.