Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind

One of Tsui Hark's early films, and it was banned. Three schoolboys in Hong Kong cause an accident out of boredom. A young woman named Wan Chu sees it. Her own anger is already at the edge; she threatens them and attaches herself to them. What follows is a chain of escalating violence, into which a line of arms smuggling enters. Its distinction is in the register: there is no entertainment here, no hero, and the violence is aestheticised nowhere. The city is shown the same way; not the bright tourist Hong Kong but narrow streets, rubbish and concrete. The first version was banned by the censors. The grounds were both the young people building and setting off bombs for amusement and the references to the events of 1967. Tsui Hark had to re-edit the film, remove sections and shoot new scenes. The original version is lost. So what is watched today is already the cut version, and it is hard even so. An important document for anyone curious about Hong Kong cinema and work that pushes the limits of genre. Before you watch, know this: the film contains disturbing images, including a scene involving animals, and is without hope from beginning to end.