Film review: Wild City - action auteur Ringo Lam returns
Release of director's first full-length feature in 12 years, intended as final part of a thematic trilogy alongside City on Fire and 1997's Full Alert, is a chance to evaluate Lam's contribution to Hong Kong cinema
While it hadlong been one of Hong Kong film buffs' pastimes to pine for a new Ringo Lam Ling-tung movie, few knew what to expect from the man behind such genre classics as City on Fire and Prison on Fire (1987). His segment in the triptych Triangle (2007) might have looked promising, but several quiet years have since passed and hopes have been fading.
However, with this week's Hong Kong release of Wild City — Lam's first full-length feature since 2003's straight-to-video Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, In Hell — it is surely an opportune moment to re-evaluate the writer-director's relevance.
Conceived by Lam as the final part of a thematic trilogy alongside City on Fire and 1997's Full Alert, the film appears to derive its title from a hackneyed observation, made during an opening voiceover by the story's protagonist, T-Man (Louis Koo Tin-lok), as he looks vacantly at a busy crossing: Money is the one issue that contaminates people's dreams, conscience and sense of justice.
Though theoretically valid, this age-old, anti-capitalist conundrum does little to illuminate some of the murky motivations piloting Lam's characters into the increasingly reckless chaos at the centre of Wild City, a technically accomplished but woodenly scripted crime thriller set in Hong Kong's crowded cityscape.