Time (2021)

[Drunk Monk]

A tale of aging assassins in Hong Kong. Lam Suet drew me in. He’s a fat actor whose done countless fat guy roles. Also in this are veteran star Yin Tse (the villainous coach in Shaolin Soccer) and Bobo Fung (known for her singing roles). The trio are an assassin team, Lam is the driver, Fung is recon, and Yin is the killer who cuts throats with a karambit.

I’m not sure what this film was supposed to be - comedy, tragedy, action, drama - it’s just a mess of ideas and tones. It begins with a comic book fight that splices in comic style images of when the trio was young, then moves to present day where they are all grappling with old age. Yin is a noodle cutter who gets replace by a robot and gets stalked by a teen girl. Lam is a chauffeur who wants to marry his prostitute. Fung owns a run down nightclub and her son, daughter-in-law and grandson live off her. They get back in the biz by doing assisted suicides and each story is it’s own mini tragedy. 

This captures the seedy squalor of Hong Kong well and all three actors deliver. But the story keeps changing tones and I got lost on how to feel about it all. The fight scenes are almost slapstick. The aging issue are a bum out. It’s colorful and has some poignant moments but those don’t last. It’s a very odd film and got several nominations for the lead actors in Asian film fests. Maybe it’s artsy? I dunno. It left me confused.

Not D00M recommended.

[Greg]

Sounds like a knockoff of Red

[Drunk Monk]

Not quite. It was more of an aged take on the HK triad genre akin to what The Gallants did for the Kung Fu genre. Overall, Red had more tone consistency. It was more tongue in cheek. Time was all over the board. It was really only funny during the fights. The rest was fairly tragic or melancholic. There was a strange grittiness, like in Lam’s relationship to his prostitute. That wasn’t graphic, more gaudy. Hard to describe really. Obtuse HK cinema.

It did have some great settings that captured HK well, some extraordinary location shots that made HK look so post apocalyptic. Still not D00M recommending it except maybe for the cfs who’ve been to HK and might be amused at the perspective on it.