Drug War

A police thriller set in northern China. Timmy Choi crashes his car after an explosion at a drug laboratory and is caught at the hospital. In the country, production above a certain quantity means the death penalty. To live, he offers to cooperate with the police. Captain Zhang accepts. From there the film follows an investigation step by step: phones, surveillance, hidden recording and impersonation. In its best known section Zhang has to impersonate two different people on the same day and changes roles between two meetings. Throughout, whether Choi is really cooperating stays uncertain. Every piece of information he gives turns out to be true, and every true piece buys him another day. It was the first crime film Johnnie To made on the Chinese mainland; the freedom he was used to in Hong Kong did not apply and the script had to pass approval. The film turns that limit into a style: no emotional scenes, almost no music, no explanation. The shootout in the last section takes place in front of a school bus and is one of the most merciless closes in the genre. Louis Koo plays Choi and Sun Honglei plays Zhang. A production near the top of its kind for anyone who likes police narratives and a cold style. For a viewer looking for a hero, the film offers sympathy to nobody.