The Untold Story

The owner of a restaurant in Macau disappears. The man now running it is irritated by anyone's questions. Soon body parts are found on the shore. The police come to the restaurant. The team leading the investigation does not take it seriously at first; the questioning is crude, the methods are irregular, and pressure is applied to extract a confession. Then what is in the building comes out. Herman Yau directs. Anthony Wong plays Wong Chi Hang. The film rests on a real case: killings at a restaurant in Macau in 1985 that ended with the disappearance of a family. It was released in Hong Kong's highest age category and its violence pushed the limits of the time; it is among the best known examples of that class of film. What surprises is the tone. The police sections are shot as comedy and the killings are extremely harsh; the two come one after another and the transition is deliberately disturbing. Anthony Wong was named best actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards for the part. For a film in that category to take such an award is unusual. Its second matter is police method; the narrative shows torture without endorsing it and without objecting either. Who it is for: viewers who follow Hong Kong genre cinema and harsh crime films. Who it is not for: it is extremely violent, some scenes are hard to endure, and the comedy does not sit with the subject.