The Roar of Vietnamese
Reviewed by YTSL
It can make for a somewhat strange and ironic
experience to watch this 1991 film some years after the Handover of Hong Kong
(back) to Mainland China. This is due in some part from the grim movie's
most sympathetic characters being ones who had fled to the former British
Crown Colony from a communist country. This is especially so when we
are shown how desperate they were to leave their homeland and what they are
willing to do to avoid being sent back there. Something else to be
considered is its being so that although the unfortunate individuals in focus
are Vietnamese in terms of nationality, they are Cantonese-speaking ethnic
Chinese (like Tsui Hark as well as the characters essayed by Tony Leung Ka
Fai and Dean Shek in the auteur's "A Better Tomorrow III").
THE ROAR OF VIETNAMESE -- an offering which would have been better entitled
"Roar of the Vietnamese" -- starts off with the on-screen display of black
and white documentary or news type still pictures of representatives of what
have come to be known to the world as "boat people". These are then
followed by a Hong Kong TV news reporter's painting a not particularly complimentary
portrait of these refugees. All in all, for much of the first half
of the film, the audience is provided with less than complimentary views
of particular Vietnamese personalities (all of them with the kind of records
that caused them to be pre-selected -- by a corrupt cop played by Lai Hon
Chi -- to be willing to commit crimes in Hong Kong in return for being sprung
out of the refugee center and given hope of their getting to emigrate to
the U.S.).
Just as it seems as though they have been established as being downright
disgusting, if not irredeemably inhuman(e), by way of their being shown engaging
in the kind of acts that are considered anti-social (e.g., open masturbation)
as well as outright criminal (e.g., the cold-blooded murder of a child),
the makers of THE ROAR OF VIETNAMESE radically change tack. More
specifically: The recruits to the "Viet Gang" who carry out "missions"
-- that range from setting fire to a recreation center into which people
have been locked to directly attacking and killing other folks -- consequently
are shown to be truly at the mercy of the afore-mentioned Officer Mak, his
lieutenant (Waise Lee plays the Hong Kong-born Vietnamese turncoat named
Tian San) and a woman we first see being questioned by the police as to the
whole affair (Sibelle Hu's Wai Yuen is yet another Vietnamese refugee) as
well as people who do care for the welfare of their fellows, even if not
their unfortunate victims.
To a surprising extent (in large part, I suspect, due to the strength of
the cast rather than the script), the main group focused upon in THE ROAR
OF VIETNAMESE do get individualized, and humanized. Those who really
stand out are: A mother (portrayed by Kara Hui Ying Hung, an actress
who really deserves to be in higher budget and quality productions than this
one) and the silent daughter she obviously loves very much; a quiet ex-cop
(played by Kwan Lai Kit); and someone wrongly arrested by his now "team-member"
and still chaffing at having spent three years in jail as a result as well
as his current circumstance (Lau Ching Wan shines here and is the heart of
this film). The others in the gang are: A young woman and the
man who took a bullet in the neck that was meant for her and subsequently
has become mute (played by Chan Pui-San and Cheung Kwok-Leung); a dissident
intellectual type who spends his free time writing never mailed wishful letters
to his mother; a fellow who spends much of his time in between "missions"
sleeping to dream; and a virgin man-boy consigned to be the most caricaturish
character of this lot.
If only there hadn't been a compulsion to supplement the movie's dramatic
portions with a slew of action sequences that actually don't look all that
greatly realistic. My feeling too is that the addition of triad intrigue
dilutes the emotional political message and components of THE ROAR OF VIETNAMESE.
This is a great pity because what could have been a really interesting serious
film ended up feeling cheapened as well as made mundane by those of its sections
that could have existed in just about any low budget Hong Kong movie (as
opposed to one with the unusual group of characters and starting point that
this film had).
My rating for the film: 5.5