HONG Kong cinema's latest outing in martial arts is 'Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In', with big and rising stars fighting within the legendary Kowloon Walled City in the heydays of the crime lords — the 1980s.
Featuring a stellar cast, the movie seamlessly blends veteran action stars with emerging talents.
Headed by major names like Sammo Hung, Louis Koo and Richie Jen, combined with rising stars like Raymond Lam and Philip Ng, they portray colourful characters who are well crafted with lots of depth and humanity.
This adrenaline-pumping adventure promises a fusion of old-fashioned action and stunning visuals.
The film transports audiences back to the gritty 1980s British colonial Hong Kong.
It unfurls the gripping tale of a troubled young man, who is thrust into the heart of the Kowloon Walled City — a densely packed high-rise labyrinth pregnant with crime.
The film follows a man named Chan (Raymond Lam), who accidentally enters the Walled City and discovers order amidst its chaos, which teaches him important lessons in life and survival.
He becomes close friends with angry young men on the same wave length as him, namely Shin (Terrance Lau), Twelfth Master (Tony Wu) and AV (German Cheung).
Under the leadership of de facto lawman Cyclone (Louis Koo), they resist the ruthless crime lord Mr Big (Sammo Hung), and vow to protect the place from future kingpins.
The actors spent a year preparing for the action scenes and this is evident with the dynamic fight choreography largely engineered by "sifu" Hung.
The heart-pounding action sequences, choreographed by stunt coordinator Kenji Tanigaki, promise a visceral cinematic experience.
'Twilight of the Warriors' creates a Disneyland-like "Walled City", where wizardry is substituted with hard-boiled kung fu fights in good-old Sammo Hung fashion.
The Chinese triads are the symbol and soul of this "city", which is a ghetto in reality, where age-old secret societies served as saviours and also tormentors of the toiling masses in equal measure.
Basically, all of the characters are criminals to a different degree, but each of them is well-fleshed out and humanised so that viewers can relate to them, especially Chan and Cyclone.
Aesthetic wonders are aplenty and they include escaping kites to symbolise the residents' yearning to be free.
Two actors truly stand out here, namely Hung and Lam.
It is wonderful to see Hung going all out to defeat his enemies, as he always does, but this time as the prime antagonist.
As for Lam, he has truly broken out of his comfort zone of playing good-looking and charismatic heroes.
In this movie, he plays a dirt-poor illegal immigrant from China to Hong Kong, which he does great in perhaps his grittiest role to date.
Another honourable mention, Ng's villainy is a stunning break from his usual stoicism. He steals the show by combining his physical martial arts prowess and ruthless facial expressions, like a hungry crocodile hunting its prey.
The movie's real star, however, is the Walled City itself, which had been torn down by the then British colonial government in the 1990s before returning the colony to China.
In recreating the historical Walled City, director Soi Cheang and his team did extensive research to make it look as real as possible.
The city's brutal looking architecture is the perfect playground for Hung and friends to execute their action sequences.
This is easily the best martial arts film from Hong Kong in years, and the dedication shown by the director, cast and crew is amazing.
NOW SHOWING
Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In
DIRECTOR
Soi Cheang
STARRING
Raymond Lam, Philip Ng, Sammo Hung, Richie Jen, Louis Koo, Aaron Kwok, Terrance Lau, Tony Wu and German Cheung.
DURATION
120 minutes
RATING
18+