Hong Kong Legends

If you crossed Japan with Hong Kong, I would be in living in a world that only Hitchin could compete with…in DVD terms, anyway. However, the fact that each only provides me with one half of perfection means that I am left in a state of tantalising near orgasm.

The good people of Japan, the Japanese, made the correct decision of choosing Region 2 for their DVD format. This means that any DVD I purchase in Japan, as I often do (both times I have been there), I can enjoy in the comfort of my X-Box (original, not 360) and Toshiba 14’’. However, the majority of Japanese DVDs that I want to buy don’t have English subtitles. Makes sense of course, being that it is sold in Japan. It would be like putting Japanese subtitles on a UK-release DVD ‘Two Pints of Lager’…or English subtitles on a UK-DVD release of ‘Two Pints of Lager’…or audio on a UK-release DVD of ‘Two Pints of Lager’.

Conversely, the large foreign populations in Hong Kong means that the vast majority of Hong Kong DVD releases have English subtitles, along with Cantonese and Mandarin. But the bastards are only bloody Region 3, or Region 1 to satisfy those light beer drinkers. This means I will be able to follow the film, but will not be able to watch it on my primitive means, and thus never be able to follow it.

There are only a few options (beyond actually getting to grips with modern technology, buying an all-region DVD player and one of those fancy TVs I’ve heard so much about) open to me: a) learn Japanese (pending); b) actually getting to grips with modern technology, buying an all-region DVD player and one of those fancy TVs I’ve heard so much about (effort); c) start watching things on my computer (I don’t like this option); or d) only buy Japanese DVDs with English subtitles and all-region Hong Kong DVDs (that’s the easy, British option).

So, while in Hong Kong last summer, I bought myself a number of DVDs of films that I had heard of but I’ve never seen or films I had never heard of, nor indeed seen. Being that a lot of them were about £3, it wasn’t too much of a risk to my bank balance, but it did also mean that I wasn’t in a massive hurry to watch them. But, being that it’s a new year, I made it my resolution to watch them all…or at least the ones I’d never heard of before…

people’s HERO (1988)

Bought mainly for one reason: I liked the cover. The other one reason is that it has Tony Leung Chui-Wai in it. Oh, housewife’s choice Tony Leung Chui-Wai. Sex. Though here he is in a much younger and wilder role than his usual smooth, suave and debonair characters. A very simple film, it is about a botched bank robbery that leads to a hostage situation, before everything goes horribly wrong. Films like this go one of two ways, and the direction it takes is down to the cast and crew involved. Luckily here, it is a cast of younger versions of the Hong Kong elite and is handled in an interesting enough manner, to turn it into more than some simple, daytime Channel 5 movie.

Spacked Out (2000)

Got to love a film called ‘Spacked Out’, especially when you read on the back of the DVD case that the four main protagonists are called Cookie, Banana, Bean-Curd and Sissy…So, a film about three food stuffs and a transsexual. Again I liked the cover; a low-budget design catching some mythical point in time, and it is produced by Johnnie To: the John Woo of the new millennium. Essentially, this is your typical youth with no future piece about a group of teenage girls in a far-out part of Hong Kong’s New Territories. On learning that she is pregnant, one of the group starts to question their wild antics, and for once looks to the future. A pretty standard, non-linear series of scenes makes this the Hong Kong answer to many similar films that have been made throughout the world, but is not exactly life changing.

First Love: The Littler on the Breeze (1998)

They really do just make more interesting DVD covers in Hong Kong. Not better ones, just more interesting. This time is was not Johnnie To as producer that led me to the film, but Wong Kar-wai, putting his name to a film directed by Eric Kot. I’m not really sure what’s going on in this film – I’m not sure that I’m meant to. The opening sequence is a bizarre collection of shots with a charmingly terrible soundtrack accompanying it. The film is much like this all the way through, similar to Wong Kar-wai’s films ‘Chungking Express’ and ‘Fallen Angels’. The director narrates a ‘making-of’ style side throughout the tales of first love, making this a film that is simply too easy to label as postmodern.

Okinawa Redez-vous (2000)

The great thing about ‘Okinawa Redez-vous’ is that the dialogue is about 50% Cantonese, 33% basic English and 17% basic Japanese. This means that I can understand about 20% of what is said without subtitles. Tony Leung Ka-fai (the non-housewife’s choice one) is a policeman that takes his girlfriend on a trip to Okinawa, where he comes across Hong Kong criminal Leslie Cheung and so plots to arrest him in-between sunning himself and breaking his girlfriend’s heart. This is a pretty standard film for a cast of big names, with the strange characters of a lovesick yakuza boss, an obsessive police desk clerk and a master criminal that’s more concerned by chasing the women than money. It seems they’d all taken a break from slightly more serious roles for this one.

It’s pretty clear to see why all of these films involving some of Hong Kong’s megastars have yet to have any real release in the UK, despite their already large numbers of films that have: all are pretty simple pieces (well, ‘First Love’ would have been simple to make, anyway) and similar English-language films can be found. But each is charming in its own way and overall they were worth every penny of the £12 total I probably paid for them.