In a belated Chinese New Year celebration, I learn that violence never solves anything. If by “never solves anything” you mean “always solves everything.”

Hey. It’s been a while, huh? Sorry about that. I’ve been catching up on other projects, and spending more time watching things than writing about them. Don’t worry, though, I’m still thinking myself into an emotionally paralytic coma just about daily. I know you were worried. That’s why I write these things. To assuage your concerns, the intensities of which are frightening. Just settle the hell down and sit back and enjoy this, my attempt at a series of short entries about how I’ve busied myself recently. This time, I’m going back to Hong Kong, home of my parents and theirs, to assuage my guilt about abandoning the culture of my ancestors. Jesus. How much assuaging can a person do in one paragraph? Well, we’ll see. It’s almost like I just learned the word, though. Seriously, I’m using the word like it’s going to be retired soon and I paid too much for it to let it go to waste. Go search your e-mail client of choice and you’ll see. I’ll wait. Never mind, just take my word for it. You’re so distrusting. No, distrusting, not disgusting. Just forget it and enjoy all the assuagement. No, that’s not French.

Hak se wui (released in the US as Election, but not to be confused with the Reese Witherspoon vehicle of the same name, lest you want to mix your high school dark comedies with your Triad gangster thrillers for a refreshing blend of people being craptards) is pretty cool. Stand by, I need to add “craptards” to my custom dictionary in Word. What’s this? I’m getting off track. The movie? Is that why you came here? Have you not learned anything? Fine. It’s a well-executed, high-suspense crime drama, low on action but engaging nevertheless. It makes the violence more poignant when it does happen, actually. It’s almost like it understands the intensity of violence and murder, showing these concepts a kind of respect that’s seldom seen in gangster films or my head. Don’t worry, I didn’t learn anything from it.

Have you ever noticed how often people describe movies as “like X meets Y” when trying to paint you a picture of the viewing experience? Never? Well, X and Y are variables representing other movies here, don’t be so literal. It used to really bother me. There was this kid in my creative writing class who couldn’t evaluate anyone’s work in other ways. But almost a decade later, I think I’m warming up to the idea. In a way, it celebrates the idea of some sort of collective consciousness. It requires a common appreciation for creators and their creations. It’s indicative of the idea that people can understand each other better through art. Unless you’re talking to a Trekkie. Then you just punch them as soon as they bring up that shit because it turns out that understanding everyone isn’t worthwhile. But in the interest of forwarding our understanding of each other, I offer this: Hak se wui is like a movie about people whose daily interactions reinforce their distrust of one another meets a movie that is atmospheric and well paced.

Well, if I said it was like The Departed meets The Godfather, you could just make up any opinion you wanted, couldn’t you?

This entry was posted by eugene on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 pm and is filed under chinese, movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.