CHUNGKING EXPRESS Grade: A (Folks, they don't get much better than this)
Directed by Wong Kar-Wei (Happy Together, Ashes Of Time) Written by Wong Kar-Wei Starring: Tony Leung (Hard-Boiled), Brigitte Lin (Peking Opera Blues) Year of Release: 1994
Rating: NR (probable Pg-13)
Capsule Review: One of the dangers of being a hard-core movie freak, besides a diminished social life and the threat of accidentally seeing something starring Pauly Shore, is the possibility of burnout. I was in an extremely ashen phase when I stumbled across the low-budget Hong Kong flick. Things haven't been quite the same since. Watching director Wong Kar-Wei's goofy ode to dysfunctional relationships is the most fun I've had with a movie since John Woo's legendary THE KILLER. A barely connected pair of stories filmed in kamikaze fashion (Kar-Wei would write scenes in the afternoon and shoot them that same night), this borders on complete incoherence at times, but always manages to recover to spectacular effect. The first story involves a lovesick cop, a blonde-wigged female smuggler who can blow away a roomful of bad guys in the time that it takes Stallone to remember a line, and 31 cans of pineapple. The second, and infinitely more amusing, story features another cop (Woo regular Tony Leung, who picked up a Chinese Oscar for his great work here) and his wacked-out relationship with a waitress who constantly breaks into his apartment to redecorate. To say anything more would be to spoil the fun.
At its best moments, this movie delivers a sustained jolt of pure cinema; it'll get you high.
Copyright 1998 by The Critic formerly known as Andrew Wright For more insanely biased reviews, check out http://www.seanet.com/~louk/ e-mail louk@seanet.com
"Let's make some noise, Colorado."
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews