Wai Ka Fai directed this stylistically ambitious study oftriads, with a propensity for ceiling shots, jerk-motion photography, 360 degree pans, distorted lenses, two sequences that are upside down, and another in total blackness! For that matter, a lot of it happens in the dark, with even darker humor. When Lau Ching-Wan's gang accidentally runs over their boss, twice, they have to complete a transaction for black market automobiles without him. Since they're fuck-ups, they mess up one job after another. Things start off badly: once they grout their dead boss behind some bathroom tiling; the guy's beeper goes off, and they can't finish the job without the pager information. Their next assignment is inspired by a triad moll privy to a bank job; but she dies of an orgasm, and once they eventually figure out where the robbers are, the cops already gunning them down piecemeal. As Lau Ching-Wan doesn't know how to drive, he barely escapes with his pals. In the carnage, blood even gets on the camera lens! The action comes to a climax in Taiwan, where through another screw-up he's commissioned to kill two opposing triad bosses -- at the same meeting, with all their gunmen in attendance. Several thousand rounds of ammo are spent in the resulting fight; three people get minor injuries. Great quote: "Brother. See the fish shitting." I'm not quite sure what he was referring to. You get the sense that the director doesn't know what he's doing, but is having a great time at it, and maybe that's the main appeal of this ironic pastiche.

(3/4)



[Reviewed by Steve Spinali]