PTU (2003)

Truly Dreadful Film

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A police captain assigns his unit to help a colleague retrieve his gun, lost in an altercation with a street-gang, before a reporting deadline expires.Just as much as the style and the look, it's the choreography and orchestration - and the way To shuffles the characters and objects about on his late-night chessboard; and the sound-scapes, in addition to the glorious night-lit streets and skyline which delight almost to the extent that the opening restaurant confrontational, ultimately tragic, musical chairs and climactic set-piece shoot-out serve as mere book-ends for what comes between. Or even, as brief irritants.The characters don't particularly matter either - although there are some particularly wonderful-looking villains - because they're all just pawns for this visual, and aural feast.You've seen plenty of tyre-squealer car-chases - maybe you've seen too many of them; To's come up with a new angle: the cars that glide at intervals through city streets, unobtrusively, apparently disinterestedly, and almost noiselessly - perhaps just to get you thinking "now I wonder what they're up to'? A crime film where all the cars keep within the speed limit? Shurely shome mishtake? And then there's the kid on the bicycle: by the time of his third sighting you're wondering is he a midget gang member, or undercover cop - or afterhours drugs mule, even; and will it be his fate to be ripped apart with bullets, by all sides? How cruel could that be, for somebody so young? It's all about building tension, and keeping you on edge - or maybe filling in the spaces on that chessboard.There are some great scenes and ideas, too - of course: as with that opening restaurant scene where various customers get re-assigned according to their place in the hierarchy, and phone messages that we only later become privy to, have fatal consequences. Then there's the tense confrontational scene in the video-game arcade, with the array of flashing video screens vieing for our attention with a synchronised symphony of unanswered cell-phones; and there's the men in cages, bent over almost triple.Thematically, it reminds me of Kurosawa's 'Stray Dog' - and there may have been more than one scene of that classic referenced; visually; and to a certain extent narrative-wise, it reminded me of Scorsese's 'After Hours'. The boy on the bicycle reminded me of the boy in 'The Third Man', and also of 'M'. But these were only in passing: To obviously has his influences, but his style is all his own. And, sometimes, style matters.

This is another film purchased on DVD while in Hong Kong last summer and that for some reason or other I never got round to watching, which is a shame, because it's a good little film. 'PTU' – or 'Police Tactical Unit' (do you want to see my unit?) – follows the plight of Detective Lo, as he searches for his gun; lost to street punks. Enlisting the help of fellow officers, he roams the streets on Tsim Sha Tsui in hope of retrieving it by dawn.Directed by Johnnie to, this feels like one of those fun films that gets made quickly in between much larger productions, a la 'Chungking Express', also set in Hong Kong. The plot is simple enough – though the characters may not always be – and it is easy to dip in and out of without too much thought.Filmed with wide-angled lenses, with close-up shots, this is classic Hong Kong cinema: capturing the claustrophobic nature of the milieu, with bright lights, dingy streets and an endless array of colourful characters trading blows through the night. Hardly To's best work, but a further stamp in his place as the John Woo for the new millennium and probably the best director from the SAR over the last decade.Using regular collaborators, such as Simon Yam and big-and-beautiful Suet Lam, To's police are a far cry from the hapless characters of Jackie Chan's 1980s, giving the impression that if one thing is illegal in Hong Kong: it's smiling. The look and feel are both slick and stylish and cult at the same time, though the music – typically a weak point in Hong Kong films, bar the work of Wong Kar-wai – is, at times, more sixth-form college hopeful with a synthesizer after a two litre bottle of Tizer than professional. But that's minor, and along with 'Breaking News' and 'Exiled', 'PTU' shows that To is the master of the roaming groups of loners…in Hong Kong and Macau, at least.www.politic1983.blogspot.com

I'm convinced that much of film is reverberation from the phenomenon of noir. The key element of noir was a capricious fate that both played arbitrary havoc with lives and flavored the eye of the camera.I am not thoroughly steeped in Hong Kong work, but there seem to be three main communities: the deeply cinematic experimentalists led by Kar-wai, the stylistic ballet of Woo and company and the neo-noirists. Unfortunately, these can superficially appear similar in many respects. But I think here we have a clear case of the third.The game is dark. Everyone seems to think they are in charge, but no one is. Luck plays the key role and many coincidences appear. The camera eye is based on the long lens.I'm beginning to appreciate cinematographers who exploit either the long or short lens. I think it is impossible to do noir with a short lens because it is so obvious that the eye is within the space of action. But few noir films go so far, so long as this one.Forget the story, which is only to convey the accidents and lack of control (except for the central scene where one character tries to get another to rub a tattoo off his neck). And forget the characters; they are just tokens borrowed from other movies. Just revel in the philosophy here: why does a world exist where everything is a matter of chance, but you as the viewer always, always happen to be in the right place to see everything?Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I've watched this film 3 days ago in the Hong Kong International Film Festival. It's the opening film for the Festival.As usual, the feedback from audiences is great and there are applauses at the end of the movie. I haven't been impressed however; only think it's little amazing to see the policeman losing the gun becoming an accidental hero.The overall acting is what makes me give not high credit to the movie. Most of the side casts are acting strange or in a way over/under acted. The main casts though more professional are not giving unexpected performance. I'm not convinced the director has spent adequate time in directing the actors' performance. Probably he emphasizes on the story and other directing skills rather than acting performance to bring up the message.The music too is a little weird. Maybe the director has wanted to give a kind of absurb atmosphere but what comes out is something not matching with the visual images. I can't say which one is inferior. Might be the music is what actually the director has wanted but he hasn't been able to provide an atmosphere in the visual image matching the music and what he wanted to create.It's a little fun overall but absolutely not a great movie. The "dark" society the director wants to create and emphasize isn't impressive. I'd rather he goes more extreme or puts up some contrast for comparison.