Wong Gok Ka Moon (As Tears Go By), 1988Dir: Wong Kar-wai
December 5, 2009
All the WKW ingredients are already there along with some of his trademark poetic moments. But overall, it still feels like an what is just an average Hong Kong gangster film, and as other critics have noticed, it's pretty much just a rip-off of Mean Streets (1973) narrative wise. This is not nearly as good or ambitious as something like Chungking Express (1994), but I think I enjoyed watching this more, especially since in between laughing at all the gangster cliches and excruciatingly 80s music, I was kinda wondering whether all that was getting riffed on as well (or as least Top Gun (1986)). Probably not considering the success of that movie. They were probably just looking for the same vibe. All the acting is like that too, with Andy Lau, Jackie Cheung, and an incredibly young looking Maggie Cheung caught hard in that decade. This just seems like a good movie to break into the Hong Kong movie biz, and let people know you are capable of handling a film.
2.9/5
2 comments:
I kind of agree with that "break into the business" stuff but I thought "As Tears Go By," was a major piece. The gangster riffs John Woo was doing then were sooo much better.
dude this movie really touched me for some reason, its probably cuz I loved the brotherhood they had (i forgot their names lol) but i loved the complex relationships representation in it so much
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