Film

At times, Election seems less like a gangster movie than the template for a gangster movie, deliberately stingy with character and emotion. Director To emphasizes process above all; a likely plurality of scenes are slow-burning, backlit conversations focused on arcane rules of procedure. This is films about tradition that’s lost its meaning, about dirty work with no clear motive.

The members of the Wo Sing triad hold an election to appoint a chairman for the next two years. The votes favor Lok (Yam), but Big D (Leung) won’t concede, and the bulk of the running time consists of allies of each man tracking the baton that’s needed to certify the results. To demonstrates a flair for the baroque set piece; in a memorably absurd scene, two gangsters, one beating the other to a bloody pulp, take a time-out for simultaneous phone calls. But notwithstanding To's frequent allusions to the Godfather movies—a fishing-trip murder echoes Fredo Corleone’s—this Hong Kong equivalent seems to offer more surface than substance.