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Paul Fonoroff

Starring: Wong  Yat-ho, Tang  Tak-po, Wong  Hau-yan, Joman  Chiang Cho-man
Director: Lawrence  Lau Kwok-cheung
Category: III (Cantonese)
Twenty years have passed since director Lawrence  Lau Kwok-cheung's feature debut, Gangs,  a milestone in Hong Kong cinematic neorealism and one of the more affecting probes into the city's adolescent gang culture. Besieged City is its 21st-century sequel.
The title refers to Tin Shui Wai, a satellite town much in the news for its  human tragedies. The script - by Frankie  Tam Kwong-yuen, Dennis Chan Kwok-san, Leung Tak-shun  and Chucky  Kou -  is a virtual sampler of these calamities, and  concentrates too many of them into the family and  friends of brothers Jun (Wong  Yat-ho) and Ling (Tang  Tak-po). As a result, the film  has too many subplots  to explore  its most promising story line: the dichotomy between the siblings.
The younger Jun is  bullied both at home and at school, to the extent that he eventually takes to living on the streets with a group of teenage misfits.
By comparison,  Ling leads a charmed existence. Ignored by his abusive father and overlooked by the schoolyard thugs, the boy's determination and will prove strong enough for him to excel at his studies. The film captures the random nature of bullying,  along with Ling's guilt over his  failure  to be his kid brother's keeper, but it could have gone further in illuminating these themes.
Besieged City could also have focused more on Jun's street friends. Most interesting among the bunch is its lone female - Panadoll (Wong  Hau-yun) - whose relationship with sister Yee-wah (Joman Chiang  Cho-man), is  complex.  However, Besieged City gains some respite from its subject matter's unrelenting grimness as it develops into an unconventional whodunit.
The mixture of the realistic and theatric attains a consistency due in large part to the naturalism of its cast of screen neophytes, a quality that has always been a hallmark of Lau's youth films, most recently in Spacked  Out (2000) and Gimme  Gimme (2001).
Although the film ties up the loose ends of the whodunit, it doesn't offer easy answers to the larger issues facing Jun, Ling and, by extension, the real-life residents of Tin Shui Wai.
Besieged City opens today



Besieged City