Too Many Ways to Be No. 1

Kau is a small-time triad in Hong Kong with neither money nor a name. Two jobs come his way: one is moving stolen cars, the other is getting mixed up in an assassination plot. After that choice the film splits in two and tells two different lives of the same man one after the other. The same question stands in both: who could this man have been. Wai Ka-fai's film is known as the first production of Milkyway Image and stands apart in Hong Kong cinema for its form: unusual camera angles, scenes that run long, a tone that keeps shifting between comedy and violence. Lau Ching-wan plays Kau. The telling does not take the gangster film seriously but does not mock it either; it reduces fate to a matter of choice and puts the same man to the test twice.