Get Reel | Film review: Gangster Pay Day
It is not often that one walks out of a cinema feeling contented after watching a gangster movie in which a good character dies. But then, it is not often that one comes across a film such as Lee Po-cheung's Gangster Pay Day.
Starring: Anthony Wong Chau-sang, Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin, Wong Yau-nam, Ng Chi-hung, Michael Chan Wai-man, Carrie Ng Ka-lai
Director: Lee Po-cheung
Category: IIB (Cantonese)
It is not often that one walks out of a cinema feeling contented after watching a gangster movie in which a good character dies. But then, it is not often that one comes across a film such as Lee Po-cheung's Gangster Pay Day.
The closing offering at this year's Busan International Film Festival, it's a drama-romantic comedy about triads with two main subplots that seem to be at odds with each other. One of them has the triads acting like domesticated pussycats, while the other has some of them showing a more violent streak. Yet things do come together pretty well largely because many of the movie's cast are much better at being funny than their filmographies suggest.
As his Hong Kong Film Awards for best actor in The Untold Story (1993) and Beast Cops (1998) attest, Anthony Wong Chau-sang is good at portraying scary and menacing characters. But in Gangster Pay Day, he shows an endearing side as Wong Kam-kwei (Ghost in the English subtitles), a triad boss who has been on the straight and narrow for years, but still has some faithful followers, such as the young Leung (Wong Yau-nam), Uncle 2 (Michael Chan Wai-man) and Brother B (Ng Chi-hung).
Early in the film, Ghost turns down a drug deal offered by the disreputable Bill (Keung Hon-man), incurring the villain's ill will. But Ghost is far more preoccupied with the death of his mother — and is only jolted out of his moroseness through an act of kindness by Mei (Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin), a cha chaan teng owner who has just lost her father.
