Film

Task Force (1997)

Director: Patrick Leung

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Vaulting over the wreckage of a film industry in deep recession, Patrick Leung's witty policier does nothing very new but still registers as one of the best Hong Kong movies of its year. Virginal cop Rod Lin (Ku, cute) first meets hooker Fanny Chan (Young, terrific) during an operation to entrap illegal immigrants working in the sex trade. She becomes the bane of his life, alternately a tormentor and a flirt; but she's really in love with a jailed boyfriend who has promised to take her to Paris for the World Cup. Their non-affair (which comes with quizzical voice-overs in the Chungking Express vein) is interspersed with non-stop subplots, digressions and flashbacks, not to mention homages to various Chinese and Japanese action classics. But as Danny Wong's unusual piano score suggests, it's finally less a thriller than a study of emotional reckonings: how to cope with a dying parent, how to handle an uncommitted lover. John Woo and other directors put in cameo appearances.

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