Johnnie To explores the moral maze facing police in crime drama Three

When Johnnie To Kei-fung began conceiving his first crime thriller in three years, he was only thinking about giving the genre a new spin. It could be that the Hong Kong action auteur had refreshed his senses after detours into romantic comedy (2014’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 2 ) and musical (2015’s Office ), or it could be that he had simply grown tired of the gangland mayhem that had become his signature motif.

“We’ve made a lot of cops and robbers films in Hong Kong over the years,” says the 61-year-old filmmaker, sitting next to frequent collaborator Yau Nai-hoi, 48, at the Kwun Tong office of their production house, Milkyway Image. “Most of these films involve car chases, gunfights, running on the streets and, sometimes, even chasing on boats. I have a feeling that every movie is like that.

“Whenever there’s an explosion scene, there’s probably someone taking a somersault at the front or some other people chasing around the back,” To continues. “While these shots are indispensable [to action films] – and in a way that’s the reason everyone is doing them – I was eager to find a new mode of expression for cops and robbers films when I had the time to slow down and think about this.”

There is a simplicity of execution to To’s new film, plainly titled Three, that belies its difficult writing process. Not only did the director set the crime story almost exclusively inside a hospital ward, but To also made his screenwriters’ lives more difficult by having the chief villain in custody from the outset. “The formula for this film is a little different from the norm. In this restricted setting, we’re making the characters’ personality flaws our main focus,” he says.

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Three revolves around a trio of characters who converge in a crowded hospital. Wallace Chung Hon-leung plays a vicious gang leader who already has a bullet lodged in his brain when he’s rushed into the emergency unit. Turning down surgery against the stern advice of Zhao Wei’s China-born neurosurgeon, the criminal then engages in a battle of wits from his hospital bed with Louis Koo Tin-lok’s irate police detective.

As these protagonists negotiate their entitled perspectives amid the stalemate, which could be ended as soon as the ringleader’s accomplices at large storm the ward, the stage is set for To and his screenwriters – Yau, Lau Ho-leung and Mak Tin-shu – to evoke topical issues in Hong Kong: from medical scandals to police collusion, as Koo’s character readily advocates “breaking the law to enforce the law”.