My affair with Asian blockbusters continue – Yesterday I saw ‘Mou gaan dou’ – a fascinating cat and mouse game between a undercover cop (who infiltered the gang) and an undercover mole (who infiltered the Police).
The two reigning superstars of Hong Kong cinema Andy Lau and Tony Leug (Wong Kar-Wai regular) play the leads as good guy/bad guy - and they give powerhouse performances switching in and out of role. Usually these kind of films will require insane leaps of logic and coincidences to move the story forward. But director Andrew Lau distracts us with extremely fast paced narration that we forget to look for plot holes.
Photographed gorgeously by Chris Doyle (interesting guy – used to be an oil driller in India, cow herd in Isreal, a whack doctor in Thailand – before learning chinese and pairing up with Wong Kar-Wai. As a native Aussie, he speaks Chinese better than his English). The production design reminded me of early 90, late 80s when Hong Kong cinema hashed out cop/robber/gangster stories with fair regularity (John Woo’s ‘Once a Thief’, ‘A Better Tomorrow’)
2 Stars on the good/bad side of law, constant tension, explosive action, built up suspense and great fast screenplay, wow…. it looks like a great material for a quick remake - seems I am not the only one thinking that way…
One of these combo is true – guess which one?
- Sanjay Gupta – Sanjay Dutt/Akshay Kumar - D’gang v/s Mumbai Police
- AR Murugadoss - Vikram/Arya - Chennai Gangster and ACP ‘Something’ (preferably some pure tamil name)
- Martin Scorsese – Leonardo di Carpio/Matt Damon - Irish mafia / NYPD
Watch the chinese original or wait for the Hindi/Tamil/English remakes…
4/5
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