Small-time gangster Wah (Andy Lau) finds himself bailing out his no-good Triad brother Fly (Jacky Cheung), who gets into increasingly serious trouble with a rival faction of his own gang. When Wah falls for his cousin (Maggie Cheung), he finds himself spreading himself too thinly.

Wong Kar-Wai’s directorial debut will probably always be the odd-one-out in his filmography even if he goes on to make another hundred films. It doesn’t have film-noir voice-overs, there’s no Christopher Doyle behind the camera and it has awful canned music for a soundtrack.

AS TEARS GO BY is almost a routine Triad thriller. I say “almost”, because even here, so early in his career, Wong has at least tried to add some depth to the characters’ emotions.

The problem is, the characters are quite unlikeable. In fact, Fly is downright annoying. He never learns from past mistakes, and predictably just goes from one screwed-up situation to another, leaving a trail of destruction behind him. Wah himself is reasonably likeable, but the fact that he always bails his little brother out of trouble without making a serious effort to get him to sort his life out made me lose patience and sympathy for him. Out of the three main characters, Ah-Ngoh (Maggie Cheung) is the least irritating, although we are left scratching our heads as to why she falls in love with Wah – he doesn’t treat her that well and is not obviously attracted to his lifestyle.

Although there are a couple of shots that look typical Wong Kar-Wai in execution, it’s clear that his skills were less than fully developed. There isn’t the normal flair and stark realism of Christopher Doyle’s photography, sadly. Worse, the aforementioned canned synth music is tinny and to top it all off, the romantic scenes are played against a truly horrible Cantopop version of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”. Someone should have told Wong that that particular piece of music had already been used in another film...

While the performances are quite strong, there isn’t enough meat on the bones in this particular gangster tale. I found that there was always something, somewhere in the film that annoyed me. Whether it was the characters, the music or the seemingly endless revenge attacks and counter-attacks the various gang factions indulge in. I was surprised to learn that it remains Wong’s most commercially successful film in Hong Kong, as on the face of it, it’s just not that good. But then, western audiences often disagree with eastern audiences on what makes a good film...