A Hero Never Dies

Two rival gangs employ two hitmen, and both are good at the job. Jack and Martin are supposed to kill each other but hold a strange respect between them; meeting in a bar, they drink from the same bottle. Then the bosses reach an accommodation and both men become disposable. Both are crippled. The subject is not loyalty but loyalty going unrewarded. The second half is not revenge but two disabled men trying to take back their dignity; the final section, played from a wheelchair, breaks the genre's usual imagery completely. The form is extremely stylised. Johnnie To uses slow motion, fixed framing and empty spaces; wine glasses, umbrellas and light bulbs recur as visual motifs. The action is arranged more as tableau than choreography. It belongs to the early work of the company To founded and is counted among the films where his personal style clarified. Made in the years after the handover, these productions opened a bleak vein from inside genre cinema. Leon Lai and Lau Ching-Wan play the two hitmen. Who it is for: viewers who like Hong Kong crime cinema and stylised action. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism; the film is artificial from beginning to end, on purpose.