Round Three Resurrection ReviewMade in Hong Kong (Fruit Chan, 1997)
Won over Postman Blues (verdict by roujin)Won over Mahjong (verdict by flieger)Lost to Vive L'Amour (verdict by Jared)Back in November 2008, when roujin posted his first verdict in this bracket and advanced
Made in Hong Hong to the second round with mild enthusiasm, worm@work
said of Chan's film, "If it ever needs to be resurrected, maybe I'll post more details on why I loved it as much as I did." Well, where are you, worm?! We're all waiting.
It turns out that
Made in Hong Kong doesn't need another advocate. The film's chaotic creativity speaks for itself. It might rival
Chungking Express as the bracket's most "nineties" film, and not just because of the posters of
Natural Born Killers,
My Own Private Idaho, and
Leon that adorn various bedroom walls. It's one of the most alive films of the decade, too, merging the wonderful messiness of
Kamikaze Taxi with the indie immediacy of
Ordinary Heroes. The ambient buzz of the city dominates the soundtrack, complementing the oft-fractured visuals to create a rather beautiful portrait of youthful hopelessness.
The overall energy of Chan's effort is sometimes more engaging than the individual scenes. He writes and directs like a man who'd been scribbling ideas down in notebooks for years, and then, with just scraps of film at his disposal, tried to cram as many of those ideas into each frame as possible.
Made in Hong Kong is almost the exact opposite of
Musuko. As flieger wrote, it's "not the work of a relaxed master, but of someone who is thinking, feeling, and just grasping at showing all the things that are there to be seen. Like Sam Lee's performing energy and verve, this a film that reaches, and on the whole, succeeds marvellously."
Made in Hong Kong doesn't end particularly well — the final twenty minutes seem to resist the idea of ending at all — but it's a very good film, and it wouldn't suit me well for its run in the bracket to end here.
Resurrection Standings (the top six seven films will earn resurrection)* Automatic ResurrectionUp next: ???
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