Word: triads
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...SHANGHAI TRIAD. A gangster movie without the classic Western romanticism by director Zhang Yimou. Shuiseng (Wang Xiaoxiao), a small town boy, is brought to the Shanghai of the 30s by his Uncle Liu (Xuejian Li). Uncle Liu takes him to work for a very wealthy mafia boss, Tang (Baotian Li) and his mistress Xiao Jingbao, played by the timeless Gong Li. Overwhelmed by the glitzy life of the big city and the opulence around him, Shuiseng also witnesses inter-triad betrayal, Xiao’s tumultuous love affair and vicious gang wars. The plot carries director Zhang?...
...cops, criminals and civilians alike are incompetent, brutal or both. There are no bullet ballets, no climactic face-offs in dove-filled churches or exploding fireworks factories. Even if To's comedic ear occasionally goes tone-deaf (I have a hard time laughing at a cop stomping a teenage triad to the brink of death, which To plays for slapstick), PTU is a refreshing subversion of an entire Hong Kong genre of films that seek easy heroism in rogue cops out for justice and sharply dressed gangsters who live by the code. In PTU there is no code?and less...
...Asia? as a spiked cocktail of Taoism, terror and tits. ?Run and Kill,? which Billy Tang made between ?Dr. Lamb? and ?Red to Kill,? matches those films in deranged fury with its tale of a fat shlub (Kent Cheng) whose wife is killed, and child char-broiled, by every triad goon and psycho slaverer west of the Himalayas. The movie gets a 10 on the mouth-agape scale. (Subway could not show it because of a rights tangle...
...sentence last week when 40 club-wielding thugs broke into the offices of the muckraking weekly's Taipei edition. The assailants, arriving in a small caravan of four motorcycles, eight cars and an RV, wore black jackets embroidered with the characters of the Taiwanese gang Heavenly Way. The triad troupe smashed computer monitors, glass doors and windows?and five security guards?before swiping the motherboard from the surveillance system and making their escape. Lai can't seem to stay out of trouble in Taiwan. Last week's events, Lai's third run-in with the triads, were probably a response...
...wife left has been his giant pig Mama, Tong Tong is inspiration, a reason to lift his head out of the slop. To his porcine-eyed son Ming, whose bedroom is decorated with pinups, she's fantasy made flesh. To Wong Chi-keung (Wong You-nam), a wannabe triad, she's the golden hooker who'll make him a pimp. And to Tiny, she's a friend?his only one. Like most heavenly gifts, however, Tong Tong is not what she seems. She teaches the painful lesson that nothing comes free in the new Hong Kong...