The Advisory for this film should have read "Nudity, profanity, violence and Don't Eat an Hour Before the Film". It is as brutal as an autopsy. People were said to have fainted and thrown up in theaters when it was released. I am not so weak of heart but am glad I was watching this in the security of my home where I could put it on pause. I did several times. Helmed by one of Hong Kong's most innovative, artistic and clever directors Pang Ho-cheung whose first six films were all very good in different ways. Since then I have to admit having lost track of him till this one. What a crack across the knuckles this is - full of creative gore and black humor that had me laughing when I wasn't gasping amid the slaughter at times.



Economic anxiety has permeated Hong Kong since the Handover in 1997. The film begins by giving us some basic economic facts - salaries have barely risen in years, while the prices for homes or renting have skyrocketed well beyond most people's ability to comfortably pay. The stereotype photo we get of Hong Kong these days is from either the Peak looking down on the city or from the harbor in Kowloon looking back at Hong Kong Island and the myriad of skyscrapers that pierce the skyline like an invading army of giants. This gives the city an aura of wealth and magnificence but in many areas if you go back off the main streets you come face to face with the real Hong Kong that many have to deal with. Old decrepit tenement buildings that don't look like they have had a paint job since the Japanese occupation with hanging laundry drying on every balcony. Like everywhere in the world now there are huge gaps between the rich and poor and in major cities this has been exacerbated by rapacious property developers destroying buildings people can afford for those even the middle class struggle with.


But don't worry, this film is not a documentary or a social lesson. It is an exercise in extreme gore - as if Pang just wanted to see if he could do it and he does in spades and hammers and knives and a fucking board through the mouth. Cheng (Josie Ho, who I notice sadly hasn't been in a film since 2016) is your basic hard working girl - two jobs trying to make ends meet and pay for her younger brother and her ill father (Norman Tsu). Since she was a young girl living in a tiny squalid flat (shown in the film jumping back and forth in her life) her dream has been to live in a high rise condo overlooking the sea. Her life isn't too cheery with the coughing father, crappy jobs and a loveless affair with a married man (Eason Chan who though billed second only has a few minutes of screen time) that takes place in sordid snatches in seedy love motels or the front seat of his car. But if she could only have that apartment, all would be well.


So she sets out to buy it and it looks like a done deal when at the last minute it falls through. But she is a determined girl our Cheng - and clearly nuts - and sets out on a night of madness and blood lust - all for a good reason as we find out in the end. The violence is truly brutal beginning with a security guard who is garroted by a plastic cord and tries to cut it off with bad results. Some of it makes you wince, other times you have to chuckle like when a guy with his intestines spilling out of him on the floor tries to light up a cigarette or the girl with the board in her mouth comes rushing out. It is nuts. Absurd to a silly degree and trying to frame this within a eco-social dynamic is just funny. It says it is based on a true story. Ok, if you say so. But I want to see the board first.