Task Force
Director: Patrick Leung
Year: 1997
Rating: 8.5
This is a truly wonderful
film that completely played against my expectations. I had anticipated a
police procedural type of film, but it is far from that. Instead it is a
very subtle character driven film that explores the lives of three cops and
the people they come into contact with on their job. There is no real conventional
plot that goes from point A to point B as the film instead weaves together
a series of vignettes, dreams and flashbacks. Somehow though these
pieces end up forming a powerful emotional whole – a film that feels very
much like real life and characters that you care about.
The film is almost entirely told from the
perspective of Leo Koo – a young inexperienced cop on the streets of Mongkok.
Much of it is Koo internally narrating the stories of his two fellow officers
– Karen Mok and Eric Tsang , his own as well as those of the people that inhabit
their world. Patrick Leung the director uses this film technique to make
all his characters very human and often with only a few light brushes of
his palette.
In the opening scene, Koo and his comrades are setting up a sting to catch
Mainland prostitutes, but instead they land Charlie Yeung a local girl. They
throw her back into the Mongkok streets – but she doesn’t let it end there.
She begins leaving bizarre messages for Koo on his pager such as “Tell him
his mother called to remind him to cut his toenails” or “his father called
to tell him that he is trapped in the men’s room without toilet paper”. This
last message sends Koo off into thoughts about his dad – an ex-policeman
who was killed on duty. Much of the film is played like that as some event
or some word will send Koo into a story and the camera follows his thoughts.
Finally one time Charlie leaves a message that her pimp is going to beat
her and Koo shows up to stop this. What he doesn’t realize is that on the
streets of Mongkok this now obligates him – she is now under his protection.
Slowly they start becoming friends, but she is waiting for her fantasy man
to return to her. Three years previously she was present at a professional
hit and the hitman saved her life and promised to return. In her romanticized
memory, the hitman can out do Chow Yun Fat and in one sequence played in
her mind – he uses a Chow trademark move by jumping backwards while shooting
with two guns – but here he just keeps going and going back across the entire
room in a slow motion dream like way.
Charlie Yeung does a great job of giving life to a somewhat cliched character
– the prostitute with a gold heart – by investing her with little quirks,
great energy and an impish sense of humor. She is also a compulsive liar
and Koo never knows when she is telling the truth – but it turns out that
the hitman is for real and he comes back to find Charlie and to finish a
job.
All the characters in this film are played so well and all are brought to
life and made so believable. Eric Tsang as a cop who loves his wife, but
can’t stop fooling around on the side. When she leaves him and remarries
we can feel his pain as his heart breaks. Karen Mok plays a tough cop who
is being beaten up inside by an uncaring boyfriend and a sick father.
There is some action in the film – well done – but really not for the purpose
of action as much as to say something about the characters of these people.
The film is filled with great little scenes – from an honorable loan shark
fighting to save his kidnapped boss, to a captured robber explaining why
he had to come back for his wounded partner, to Koo talking to the comatose
father of Mok’s about his own dead father, to Mok quieting two loud pretentious
talkers at a movie to the final tension packed scene where Koo discovers
if he is made from the same stuff as his father.
This is a very intelligent, well acted and well told film. I just didn’t
want it to end and wanted to continue to hear more stories about the streets
of Mongkok.