Movie Review: Young and Dangerous: Reloaded/古惑仔: 江湖新秩序

Paul “Pocket Pool” Wong in the heterosexual pants.

“If you’re not having fun, lower your standards.”

I don’t know where I first heard that, but I’ve found it very useful in my life.

I find it especially useful when watching local films of recent vintage.

Sadly, at times it seems that I can’t lower my standards enough.

Sometimes I don’t need to lower my standards.

Sometimes they’re lowered for me.

Pre-lowered, you might say.

Exhibit A: Any and all films with Wong Jing’s imprint, either as producer or director.

Psychologists would call this wish fulfillment.

They’ll never win awards, but they’ve been eligible for 30 years, so he must be doing a thing or two right.

Behold the face of acquittal.

Wong Jing movies are made to entertain a certain kind of people.

Under-educated, slightly prejudiced, working-class people.

But let me not speak ill of my family.

For me, that’s what gives them their charm.

The films, not my family.

“Happy f@#$ing St. Patrick’s Day, f@#$ers!”

Neither Wong Jing nor his films have any arty pretension, unearned hubris, or fey, sunglass-wearing, bemused detachment.

And God bless him for that. 

He and his films are what they are, and you either like them or you don’t.

If h **is films rise above mediocrity, it’s a pleasant surprise.**

I had already experienced such a surprise when I watched Wong Jing’s last film, released just weeks ago.

All of this ‘knowledge’ rattled around my head on a recent morning when I went to the Golden Harvest cinema in Mongkok to watch the Wong Jing-produced/Daniel Chan-directed Young and Dangerous: Reloaded/古惑仔: 江湖新秩序.

Digression: I noticed two things at the cinema. 1) I shared the screening with one other ticket holder. Quietest screening I’ve ever been to. Which is important because 2) renovation is taking place in the cinema, and there are signs alerting you to this and apologizing if there is noise during your screening. But these signs only appear upstairs,after you’ve bought your (non-refundable) ticket. Hong Kong; home of caveat emptor.

Young and Dangerous: Reloaded/古惑仔: 江湖新秩序 marks the cinematic return of characters and stories originated almost 20 (!) years ago by Wong Jing and Andrew Lau Wai Keung.

This time, instead of Ekin Cheng and Jordan Chan, we get Law Chung Him and Oscar Leung as Chan Ho Lam and ‘Chicken.’

No wonder the comic is called Teddy Boy.

Him Law tries his best, but he really didn’t convince me.

Him talking about himself. Or is that Himself? Or Him Self? Philip Ng struggles mightily to not choke f@#$ out of Him.

Sammy Sum takes on the role of Ugly Kwan, and while he succeeds in evoking the namesake, I didn’t find him anywhere near as threatening as Francis Ng in the original.

Has “kick me” ever been a clearer message?

The tension between him and Him (couldn’t resist) is palpable. Or not.

“你的手指的氣味呢?”

But Sunny gets to have a couple love scenes with a visibly topless Winnie Leung, so at least he was entertaining.

It was nice to finally get to see Winnie Leung’s breasts without having to watch a Scud movie.

While some may say that nudity in films is unnecessary and disquieting, I think you’ll agree that it’s nowhere near as revolting as seeing these same two people dressed:

The things you see when you haven’t got your gun.

It was nice to see Jazz Lam in Young and Dangerous: Reloaded/古惑仔: 江湖新秩序. My most salient memory of him was playing Tai Fei’s son in one of the Y&D spinoffs. And he doesn’t seem to have aged a day since.

“猜猜看這手指的歷史……”

Philip Ng Won Lung has been working with Wong Jing quite a lot in recent years, and for Young and Dangerous: Reloaded/古惑仔: 江湖新秩序 he has moved up the ladder a notch (or put a foot on two rungs), being both an actor and action choreographer in the film.

“聞不到它.”

Considering he’s a trained martial artist, it’s no surprise that he’s the most physically convincing in his action scenes.

But his behind-the-camera work is also notable, managing more than once to make skinny men brawling in Capri pants look like something more than a cat fight on Pride Weekend.

 This does not scare me.

I have no idea how he managed it, but anyone who’s seen Beach Spike knows that Philip is a great motivator.

“Do I have to use The Thumb again? DO I!?!?!”

 And what is Philip’s dramatic reward for this effort?

What’s his onscreen payoff?

Having to cry over a dead dog while holding a kickboxing trophy.

No one ever said acting was easy.

Not even in a Wong Jing film.

Denise Ho, who apparently could only be on set for a day, makes a cameo appearance as Sister 13 and does a fine job of it.

Look who’s behind her!

I was unsurprisingly happy to see Joman Chiang, whose character, nostalgically enough (if you know what I mean), is named Joman in the film.

Apparently it’s nigh on impossible to make up character names for actors in Hong Kong. 

Jacqueline Chong plays a small role, and manages to convince with what little she is given, though her best moments don’t appear in the film at all.

Dammit.

You would think that such imagery would be as pleasing to the man who instigated it as it is to me.

You would be wrong.

Scanning their contracts for an out as the director realizes he’s sitting on the wrong side.

I was very happy to see Alex Man Chi-leung make an appearance, because, well, he’s ALEX MAN.

“Hey Jacqueline, let’s go have congee…”

 Simon Lui is on board as well, sporting a haircut that is as over-the-top as his acting used to be.

“I’m getting too old for this sh*t…”

It’s a good thing the film is based on a comic book, because that way, when it degenerates into farcical overstatement and silliness, it can be chalked up to an attempt to emulate not only the source material but the medium thereof.

Subtlety is in short supply here, but neither the story nor the film really calls for it.

Frankly, I didn’t miss it.

I was having too much fun in too many ways.

The film quickly earns its Category III rating and wears it like a badge (or tattoo) of honor; incessant profanity makes Young and Dangerous: Reloaded/古惑仔: 江湖新秩序 one of the most linguistically authentic local movies in recent memory.

Winnie Leung’s breasts are shamelessly put on display in the most lurid, exploitative fashion.

I was offended. But I couldn’t look away.

There is plenty of violence on offer, up to and including disembowelment.

Perhaps the strangest and most welcome aspect of this so-called ‘low brow’ film is the way in which its content (and subsequent rating) actually elevate the film and give it some unexpected social weight and relevance.

Let’s face it; making a film for just the Hong Kong market is as rare as it is risky. Filmmakers don’t want to offend the gigantic potential market ‘up above’ (China). 

Well, Wong Jing being, as always, The King of Restraint,  Young and Dangerous: Reloaded/古惑仔: 江湖新秩序 not only excludes itself from the China Market, it drops a steamer on the doorstep and leans on the doorbell.

This film offends China as much as it offends Christians, prudes, and film snobs.

One of the gangsters ends up in cahoots with ‘business partners’ from China. But not just any partners; at least one of them works in Hong Kong’s Liaison Office.

It’s a daring thing to put into a film, if only because it ensures (even without the blood, bad words and breasts) that this won’t be playing above Lo Wu. It’s also daring because it points up the entire “patriotic gangster” doublespeak nonsense that none too effectively covers the Central Governments realpolitik.  

While on a membership drive for the Hung Hing society, gangsters encounter students who take part in Scholarism, the recent social movement to eradicate Moral and National Education (see same Wikipedia page), known more colloquially as pro-China brainwashing.

Sometimes  **Young and Dangerous: Reloaded/古惑仔: 江湖新秩序  impresses by not being offensive when you most expect it to.  In a rare moment of social progressivism, there are South Asians in the film whose physical appearance, culture and even Chinese language skill are not made the locus of humor. Their matter-of-fact portrayals are therefore very unique and noteworthy. **

Another interesting point the film makes is that while gangsters may seem cool and virtuous, they are indisputably uneducated morons whose life and its endings are the inevitable result (and responsibility) of no one but themselves.

Even Winnie Leung’s breasts have some relevance and importance. It’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen the breasts of a local, native, Cantonese-speaking woman onscreen in a local (non-art) film.

It was nice to see/hear a topless woman talk dirty in Cantonese and not be dubbed. 

For reasons unknown to me, local women will no longer take their tops off (much less their bottoms) in films (or other media, I imagine).

I don’t know what changed or when or why that caused the local women to cover up, and to be honest, I can’t say that I take the high road and refuse to look at imported breasts. 

I do.

So I want to sincerely thank Winnie for this selfless sacrifice. 

They’re lovely, trust me.

***Young and Dangerous: Reloaded/古惑仔: 江湖新秩序*  is a prurient, shameless, populist film that also happens to be a hell of a lot of fun.**

I wonder sometimes if whatever tiny glimmer of a future purely local cinema has is in the realm of Category III. Pang Ho Cheung (and a large number of HK people) have shown it can be commercially viable. The question is whether or not these scattered few films can actually become a trend.

I couldn’t escape a warm nostalgic feeling sitting in that cinema. I was in Hong Kong watching a movie made expressly for Hong Kong, full of gangsters, profanity, violence, breasts, gambling and pertinent local issues. 

It’s sadly a rare treat these days.