Election. by Johnnie To. Review from the R3 HK DVD.

Have you seen the teaser of ELECTION 2?
(It is an easter egg on ELECTION 2-disc DVD special edition; it's on disc 2 under the "Trailers" menu; select the object held by Simon Yam to play it.)

I honestly didn't find it that confusing, nor did I think the middle dragged that much at all; I loved the farcical back-and-forth nature of it. To be fair I'm a big To fan - so I'm out of place on Twitch, right? :P - but this still seemed really beautifully done in every respect to me. Goodfellas without the rose-tinted glasses, to paraphrase another review I read. Can't speak for the realism from a personal viewpoint, but it feels real enough - at the end, it all boils down to power and there's nothing honourable, just or brotherly about it.

Loved the movie. Can't wait for the sequel and the 3-hour director's cut DVD that should be out around the time the sequel hits HK theatres.

Sigh. My copy is off being molested by a customs worker somewhere ... YesAsia was slow getting the title added to their site, so I bought it from Buyoyo and almost every time I order from them it gets stopped in customs.

Rooks: To often frustrates the hell out of me, not because he makes bad films (though he's definitely done a few of those) but because he always seems to be on the cusp of something great only to kill the effort with substandard characters or weak plot moments. He makes me crazy, but I keep coming back to him. That said he's definitely a technician par excellence ... that opening sequence in Breaking News is just stunning ...

Whenever my copy arrives I plan on making the Election 2 teaser available here ...

Same here, I ordered mine weeks ago from buyoyo, but I'm certainly in no hurry, as I've got six Korean pictures & three box-sets of K-dramas (as well as Uno!) arriving any day.

I only just started looking into the HK scene myself. Most of the so-called "classic" HK action pic's have been a disappointing, but I gave To a look based on positive reviews.

I know everyone out there will write in to say I'm nuts, but having just finished watching his Running on Karma, I found the first hour or so exhilarating, like a shot of adrenaline. The 2nd half kind of lost me, and I can see why so many viewers found it baffling. I'll have to watch it a second time before I can pass judgement on it.

Andy Lau carries (literally) his role admirably (though Cecilia Cheung couldn't act her way out of a paper bag), and the stunning camera work, dramatic lighting, vivid color, and amazingly enough, even the transfer (Mei Ah) are all superb. Well worth the ten bucks. Most HK videos have pretty sloppy sub's, and this one's no exception (though I'm gladdened to hear that the interview on Election is subtitled, a practice almost unheard-of).

My favorite recent HK video wasn't an action/triad flic at all, but a comedy by Jeff Lau, Chinese Odyssey 2002, which also benifited from a similarly good treatment by the same studio.

Wow - I'm surprised to find people who haven't experienced the world of Johnnie To. I'm envious that you'll get to see a lot of these movies for the first time. If you're interested in reviews of most of his movies, check out

http://www.subwaycinema.com/frames/reviews2.htm

We've shown most of Johnnie To's films at festivals or retros in the past and reviews are in there for a lot of his stuff. That said, I'd recommend you check out:
RUNNING ON KARMA
THE MISSION
A HERO NEVER DIES
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
THE LONGEST NIGHT
PTU
THROWDOWN

PTU I recommend with reservations, but a lot of people really like it. I find it a bit fascist, but there you go. It still has good qualities.

If you want to get more adventurous, check out:
SEALED WITH A KISS
LIFELINE
WHERE A GOOD MAN GOES
TOO MANY WAYS TO BE NO. 1
RUNNING OUT OF TIME

And don't forget that he also directed HEROIC TRIO 1 and 2, which are Hong Kong comic book classics.

Hong Kong has a long and complicated history of triad movies, and the good thing about ELECTION is that it tries to present a more realistic view of triads than most of the HK movies. The YOUNG AND DANGEROUS series spawned 13 installments (including spin-offs) and it presented a heroic portrait of righteous triads. The movies are a lot of fun, but Johnnie To seems to feel that all the triad talk of brotherhood and tradition is just cover for the real deal which is making money at all costs and with ELECTION he's trying to blow the camoflage away. Or at least beat it in the head with a rock.

I actually met him in Hong Kong last year while he was finishing up ELECTION and he said that he considered some people in triads to be "worse than animals" which gives a whole new angle on that final scene at the monkey farm.

And, by the way, the Hong Kong two-disc set that I have is All Region, not Region 3. It's also English subbed. But it wouldn't be too weird if there were more than one version of the DVD floating around out there.

hey grady, the set i have is the 2-disc from HK : put R3 because you can pretty much assume its so, HK being R3 by definition. whether a disc actually turns out to be a different region than expected, well - i cant tell on my player... one thing i will add about the film, it being the 99 minute cut on this edition, is that if there is indeed a 3 hour version around, then i would imagine from the lengthier sequences in this cut that the longer version will expand and clarify the film in a more confident manner (imagine 'the godfather' cut down to 90 minutes for example) : longer may be more challenging, but i get the sense from election that the length is necessary and would improve it no end...

For the record, my experience of To so far has been:

Election
Running On Karma
Running Out Of Time
Throwdown
Breaking News
and PTU.

I have The Mission, too, but I still haven't got round to watching it. You could sort of throw in The Longest Nite, I suppose; it does bear some of his trademarks even though he didn't direct.

And yes, I loved all of those. Really, I adored Throwdown, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. :P Not without faults, sure, but the weirdness/magical realism/playfulness/whatever rarely, if ever jarred, and none of the cast felt particularly out of place. Ditto with Running On Karma, too; I dunno why it is that the out-there stuff felt - to me - like a reasonable progression from the first and second acts... it just clicked. Not perfectly, but it did feel coherent, solid... playing by its own set of more-or-less understandable rules.

I can see why people would find it hard to like the man's work - find good reason not to, even - but he continues to entertain me. ;)

I like To a lot too, even tolerate some of his more obviously commercial works. Absolutely adore The Mission, PTU, and most of his late 90s work. Recent stuff is more hit or miss, but when he hits... he hits HARD. ^_^

That's weird about the Region 3. The back of the HK DVD box I have is marked "ALL REGION" or, rather, it has the Region symbol with "ALL" written across it.

I just don't want folks without All Region players to shy away from checking out the disc. It's a really good movie in my somewhat pathetic and deluded opinion.

yep, have an all region player : my point is, although the disc packaging may say 'all region', its not always spotted (i.e i didnt, didnt think to check) cos HK is R3... anyway, if you dont have a multiregion player then an R0 disc is just fine for you... if your interested
in the film.

I thought HK discs - official ones, not boots - were quite commonly R0 anyway? Several of mine are, I know that, and they are the real thing.