Yi ge zi tou de dan sheng (1997)

reviewed by
Richard Scheib


TOO MANY WAYS TO BE NO. 1 (Yige Zitou De Dansheng)

Hong Kong. 1997. Director - Wai Ka-fai, Screenplay - Wai, Matthew Chow & Szeto Kam-yuen, Producers - Anthony Chow & Johnny To, Photography - Wong Wing-hang, Music - Cacine Wong, Production Design - Silver Cheung. Production Company - Milkyway Image Co. Lau Ching-wan (Ah Kau), Francis Ng (Matt Chan)

Plot: The Hong Kong mobster Ah Kau is plunged into trouble after the gang run their boss down during an armed raid on a bathhouse. Kau and the rest of the gang complete a delivery of stolen cars to Mainland China for the money only to see them confiscated for owed money and then agree to help the boss's wife rob a rival gang - only to have her die during sex and the armed raid go wrong. In another reality Kau makes a different set of choices and there is persuaded to help a friend make an assassination hit in Taiwan - only to get too drunk to remember who they are hitting and finding the two of them have been hired by rival brothers to shoot the other.

This Hong Kong crime film is a rather funny take on the whole modishly cool criminal operation subgenre created by `Reservoir Dogs' and copied by the likes of `The Usual Suspects', `Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead' et al. Here the band of stylish, hard-talking crims which has become a staple of the subgenre since `Reservoir Dogs' are replaced by a group of bumbling wannabes who have more in common with Abbott and Costello than Tarantino. The exercise is shot through with a sense of Terry Gilliam-esque black irony wherein everything that can go wrong inevitably will. The gang's boss is accidentally run over - they brick him up only to find they have entombed his ringing pager with him; one of the hoods keeps trying to get his senile grandmother to give him the contact name of the person he is to hit over the phone; the hoods wake up after a night's heavy drinking to find they have agreed to a hit and then that each has been hired by two mobster brothers to rub out the other brother; they mug a woman only to find that the woman has been left brain-damaged and is a triad boss's wife and that they have now been hired to find and kill themselves. The whole exercise is more a dog-legging series of ironic twists than it is any real plot but it is conducted with an immense degree of energy. And it is as much notable for the energy of the exercise as it is for the eccentricity of the camera-work - a fight is filmed with the camera upside down; another with it swinging from side to side as though on a pendulum; or fluid camera shots with the camera snaking through the aftermath of shootouts or action melee scenes to take in everything that is happening at once.

The film also has a unique narrative structure. It tells one story then backtracks to the beginning of events to retell an alternate story based on what might happen if a different central choice was made by the hero. This may well have been inspired by the elliptical story-telling structure of `Pulp Fiction', as some have pointed out, but really is a device of sufficient uniqueness and originality to stand on its own. Of course the basic idea of telling two alternate storylines based on different choices was then stolen in the following year's `Sliding Doors'.

Reviewed at the Christchurch 1998 International Film Festival

Copyright Richard Scheib 1998


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