Starring: Nick Cheung Ka-fai, Nicholas Tse Ting-fung, Kwai Lun-mei Director: Dante Lam Chiu-yin Category: IIB (Cantonese and Putonghua)
As The Stool Pigeon's opening credits unfold, audiences are bombarded with a cacophony of barely comprehensible snippets of conversation: mostly about the conduct of police-employed informers, as if heard through surveillance devices.
A fitting sonic prologue, given how Dante Lam Chiu-yin's latest film reads like an action-fuelled police procedural. True to its name, its central idea is about how a police officer coaxes - or, to be more specific, coerces - an ex-con to infiltrate a heist gang to undermine their violent plot and bring them to justice.
What appears to be an aural concoction to induce an early adrenaline rush, however, turns out to be a more profound device delving into the mind of the lead character. The mashed-up voices reappear midway, this time as the soundtrack of the nightmare suffered by detective Don Lee (Nick Cheung Ka-fai) - pained by the moral ambivalence of a job which involves forcing his informers into ever-spiralling personal peril.
This canny move embodies Lam's progress into more nuanced, cerebral cinema. Previously better known for action thrillers, the director (with screenwriter Jack Ng Wai-lun) began moving into more narrative-driven territory first with 2008's multiple-narrative The Beast Stalker and then this year's Fire of Conscience. They're both technically exciting and spirited pieces which, sadly, came undone with flawed storylines. With The Stool Pigeon, Lam and Ng have kept it simple, and managed to deliver their best offering which moves flowingly while engaging in a study of a character in turmoil - a seemingly ordered life disintegrating as he realises the consequences of his deeds.
And those misdeeds are laid out upfront, as the opening sequence sees Don casting an informer's well-being aside to bust a drug deal. This affects his next job when he brings in ex-con Ho Sai-fui (Nicholas Tse Ting-fung, above right, with Cheung), hoping to bring down a band of outlaws led by kingpin 'Barbarian' (Lu Yi) and his partner Dee (Kwai Lun-mei). Don's stony demeanour dissipates as Sai-fui is sucked into Barbarian's intrigue, leading to a denouement that is both a physical and moral battle.