Protégé

Nick has worked seven years for Kuen, who runs Hong Kong's largest heroin network, and is being groomed as his successor. Nick is in fact an undercover police officer. Kuen's heart is failing, he wants to hand the business over, and he shows Nick everything: the money, the laboratory, the fields in the Golden Triangle. Derek Yee wrote and directed. Daniel Wu plays Nick, Andy Lau plays Kuen, Zhang Jingchu the addicted neighbour, Louis Koo her dealer husband. What sets the film apart is showing the whole chain: from the poppy field to refinement to the needle on the street, each link handled separately. Yee researched it at length and shot the field sequences in Thailand. Lau's drug lord is not a standard villain; a family man, he describes his trade as rational business, and that is the coldest thing in the film. The addiction scenes are unadorned, and some stretches are directly hard to watch. Who it is for: fans of Hong Kong crime cinema and undercover stories. Who it is not for: anyone unprepared for drug use shown bare.