http://www.screendaily.com/story.asp?st ... 784&r=true

Looking forward to this one.

Credits

Production companies
Milkyway Image
One Hundred Years of Film

International sales
Celluloid Dreams

Hong Kong distribution
China Star Entertainment
Executive producers
Charles Heung
Dennis Law

Producers
Dennis Law
Johnnie To

Screenplay
Yau Nai Hoi
Yip Tin Shing

Cinematography
Cheng Siu Keung

Editors
Law Wing Cheong
Jeff Cheung

Music
Robert Ellis-Geiger

Main cast
Simon Yam
Louis Koo
Gordon Lam
Nick Cheung
Wong Tin-lam
Lam Suet
Andy On
Mark Cheung

Same here, as I really liked Election. I've always liked triad films for some reason.

i caught election 2 last weekend and i thought it was better than election.

Above link to the review requires a subscription

The links expires after a week or so after they post it. I think I have a copy somewhere that I can post.

Election 2 (Hak Sewui: Yi Wo Wai Gwai)

Shelly Kraicer in Hong Kong 07 April 2006

Dir: Johnnie To. HK. 2006. 93mins.

The second part of Johnnie To’s contemporary gangster saga, Election 2 will be a treat for fans of last year’s original, eager for more from its black-as-pitch Hong Kong triad family. But this exposition-heavy sequel is unlikely to draw in a new audience. Slow to build a head of steam, its last act payoff may come too late to satisfy those not already committed to To’s realistic, cynical view of contemporary Hong Kong society.

The first Election was last year’s surprise hit at home: for a local film with no A-list box office draws and a Category III rating (no one under 18 allowed) for explicit triad-related content, it managed an astonishing HK$15m-plus, placing it among the top five homegrown films.

Election 2, which opened the 30th annual Hong Kong International Film Festival earlier this week, rolls out in Hong Kong on April 26. There, where it will be the only local franchise built from any of last year’s hits, it should benefit from pre-sold audience loyalty.

International sales may be tougher, given the film’s specific local ethos and reliance on the original. Festival exposure, though, should naturally follow in the wake of Johnnie To’s now-consolidated international reputation, which has moved well beyond niche Asian- and action-themed events after successive appearances at Cannes – where Election competed last year – as well as Berlin and Venice.

The story picks up some time after smooth, business-like Lok (Simon Yam) has won election as the Wo Shing society’s godfather for a two-year term. A new election looms - this triad society, unlike the city in which it is based, democratically votes in a new chairman/godfather every 2 years - and Lok is bent on an unprecedented second term. But his affable demeanour conceals a core of psychopathic cruelty and he determines to eliminate the other candidates that stand in his way.

Prime among them is Jimmy (Louis Koo), a model-handsome 21st century gangster with an MBA, who admits that he entered the triads merely as a fast track to financial success. Jimmy’s election would consolidate his Mainland land deals. The film’s plot follows in meticulous and increasingly byzantine detail the machinations, duplicitous alliances and acts of brutality that mark this underworld election campaign.

To has a fair claim to the title of modern master of the gangster film. Current comparisons to Coppola’s Godfather trilogy are inapt. Those films are grand opera; To makes chamber music. His radically low-key lighting, precisely designed widescreen mis-en-scène, and meticulous direction of fine ensemble casts are hallmarks of his post-1997 style.

No one can extract more tension from still, sculptural friezes of actors in non-motion. A scene in Election 2 typically opens with actors in a frozen tableau pulsing with potential energy, with a sense of cataclysmic violence ready to erupt just beneath the surface.

Tonally, the film is typical To, with a range extending from moments of goofy visual humour (To regular Lam Suet clowning around) to an absolutely chilling, relentlessly extended torture sequence whose sickening specificity (it evokes the horror of the tortured more than their actual physical abuse) echoes, perhaps unconsciously, Abu Ghraib.

What is unexpected is the film’s narrative unbalance. The first hour is a hard slog through complex exposition without an accompanying crackle of tension. Acts of violence that lurk just behind the laconic, sometimes obscure, negotiations between gang leaders - and which constitute the kinetic energy that give this kind of To film its palpable excitement - are held back, buried in the deep shadows that define the film's cinematographic palette. When To unleashes his hounds (literally) it’s almost too late.

Audiences accustomed to reading post-handover Hong Kong films against that city’s current struggle for democratic government will be surprised to find To laying all his allegorical cards face up on the table, with a bluntness that attenuates some of the Election 2’s suggestive power.

While a form of democracy (the Wo Shing family’s senior gangsters vote in the new chairman) may have been good enough for the old (colonial) Hong Kong, the new (Mainland-dominated) HK Special Administrative Region needs something more from its "patriotic" triads. Thus the gangsters come under pressure from their would-be Mainland business partners (cops and corrupt officials alike) to set aside these open contests for something more stable and controllable.

The ending is open enough to suggest that it will probably be seen best, in retrospect, as an intermezzo between the formally brilliant original and the saga’s presumably upcoming grand finale.

To's usual stable of (almost exclusively male) actors carry off their roles with appropriate restraint and stylishness. As with most of To's more personal works, the Election films show more interest in social structures than in individual psychology. The cast correspondingly gives clear but somewhat uni-dimensional performances, though Simon Yam and Nick Cheung are standouts at suggesting the chilling tensions lying deep within their characters.

Production companies
Milkyway Image
One Hundred Years of Film

International sales
Celluloid Dreams

Hong Kong distribution
China Star Entertainment
Executive producers
Charles Heung
Dennis Law

Producers
Dennis Law
Johnnie To

Screenplay
Yau Nai Hoi
Yip Tin Shing

Cinematography
Cheng Siu Keung

Editors
Law Wing Cheong
Jeff Cheung

Music
Robert Ellis-Geiger

Main cast
Simon Yam
Louis Koo
Gordon Lam
Nick Cheung
Wong Tin-lam
Lam Suet
Andy On
Mark Cheung