"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, July 29, 2017

A Little TLC(w): Chinese Midnight Express (1997)

This Tony Leung Chiu-wai film is a little bit Shawshank – it bears a lot of the narrative hallmarks of that iconic film, but despite some strong moments and a good lead performance from Leung, it never manages to be more than decent.  Although there are plenty of ingredients for a fine movie here, it doesn’t quite coalesce into that satisfying whole (premise spoilers.)

Ahn, an investigative journalist, has just published a major story on corruption in the police department.  His valiant stand is rewarded with harsh retribution when a police chief/secret crime boss has him framed for drug possession and sentenced to three years in prison.  Ahn’s unjust sentence brings him a great deal of suffering, but at the same time, he starts to recognize the depth of the corruption inside the prison, and he rallies his fellow prisoners to fight for more humane treatment.

This film’s worst crime, in my estimation, is being seriously overwritten.  While it gains some traction in the second half as Ahn starts to find allies in the prison, the first half is kind of a mess.  The opening scenes have way too many instances of stalwart Ahn, the only journalist in Hong Kong with integrity, talking about how he isn’t afraid to stand up to a dirty police force.  We’re talking drinking-game levels of repetition here.  And when Ahn arrives in prison, the next sizable chunk of the film is dedicated to the horrors he experiences:  beatings and more unsanctioned forms of torture from the guards, both humiliation and violence from other prisoners, and all manner of indignities and instances of personal suffering.  Now, I don’t want to make light of prison conditions in the least, and I’m not trying to negate what Ahn experiences of his feelings about it.  But the way it’s done just doesn’t work for me.  It feels like low-grade torture porn rather than scenes with anything to say about the issue. 

Fortunately, things improve quite a bit when Ahn and the other prisoners start banding together.  These scenes still show the injustices occurring in the prison, but they also have an “indomitability of the human spirit” vibe going for them, making Ahn and his new friends much more engaging to root for.  Instead of an unrelenting beat-down, we see a two-sided struggle, with the prisoners fighting tooth and nail despite having the deck stacked against them.  I understand that the film needs Ahn to find his allies fairly slowly, but the first half could’ve used more of this attitude.

As for Leung, his performance as Ahn keeps me going in the rough first half of the movie – the extent to which the character interests me is all down to his acting, and it’s a relief to see Ahn find some fight in him later in the film.  Instead of just the principled-if-somewhat-self-righteous character being tortured in every scene, Ahn starts to emerge as a reasonable strategist who is able to play the game by different rules than most of his fellow prisoners.  What he lacks in size, fiercesomeness, and street cred, he makes up in shrewd observation and a talent for skills the other prisoners haven’t had a chance to develop (for instance, an important victory hinges on Ahn’s fluency in English.)  I just wish we could’ve gotten to that guy a lot sooner.

Recommend?

In General – Not necessarily.  While it has its merits, the film spends too much time hammering the same few points before it settles into the story it really wants to tell.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Not a must.  Leung salvages the film in the first half and makes of most of Ahn coming into his own in the second, but the movie just takes too long to get around to some compelling material for him.

Warnings

Violence, sexual content (including rape,) drinking/smoking/drug references, language, and strong thematic elements.

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