| Film
Reviews
Film reviews by
Mark Harris
Blood, guts
and the movies
It's a matter of life and death for those at the top.
And that's just the politicians
Election
Hong Kong 2005, Cert TBC
Director: Johnny To
UK release date TBC
The temptation to draw parallels between the Wo Shing
Triad gangsters in Election and the jury at Cannes is
almost too great to resist, so I won't. In one, a shadowy
group of powerful individuals sits in a smoky room and
decides who among them will lead the group in its never-ending
struggle for supremacy in a dog-eat-dog world. And the
other's just a movie.
Cannes is unlike any other film festival. More than 50
per cent of the international movie industry's deals for
the entire year are made during its 11 short days and
long, long nights. The smell of money permeates the entire
proceedings: those who have it glide endlessly from blacked-out
Bentleys to red carpets; those who don't dog attendees
at the various pavilions and stalls, handing out business
cards like confetti and launching into one-minute pitches
over five-euro espressos.
Election was one of the 22 films in competition this year,
although nothing short of massive postal vote fraud would
have let it win the coveted Palme D'Or. It's a convoluted
thriller about the election of a new boss for a group
of successful Hong Kong gangsters. Calm, competent Lok
is up against fiery, unstable Big D, and their lobbying
soon degenerates into lobbing wads of cash at the voters,
internecine squabbling and inevitably, extreme violence.
Matters reach a head in a bravura sequence when the Dragon's
Head Baton, the Triad's ancient symbol of leadership,
passes from faction to faction in an increasingly bloody
series of events. Director To handles the political horse-trading
with as much assurance as he does the film's sporadic,
but chillingly effective, violence, and an epic Southern
guitar-picking soundtrack adds a Sergio Leone Western
atmosphere. Think The Long Good Friday with a dash of
1970s Hong Kong policier and you won't be far off.
Hong Kong's new Beijing masters no doubt cast their seal
of approval on the film's thinly veiled message - that
democracies are corrupt, criminal enterprises, where intimidation,
corruption and brute force lurk behind fake smiles and
easy lies. But here's where the parallels come to an end,
as the Cannes Film Festival is a genuinely open, accountable
celebration of movie-making, where art is all-important
and the grubby business of selling tickets is a mere distraction
for its noble auteurs.
Well, I do want my invite next year, after all.
 It's
All Gone Pete Tong
UK 2004, Cert 15
Director: Michael Dowse
Showing at Odeon, UGC
Dowse gets the obvious joke out of the way right at the
start of this stylish mockumentary - Pete Tong has the
first speaking role after the credits, interviewing mashed-up
superstar DJ Frankie Wilde (Paul Kaye) at the start of
his eleventh Ibiza season. Wilde is a couple of factors
short of total sun block, thanks to a decade of bad drugs,
good booze and an ego only slightly larger than his permanently
dilated pupils.
But things are on the slide: Wilde's latest album (featuring
two of the best cinematic Teutons since the Kraftwerk-alike
band in The Big Lebowski) is stalled in the studio; his
Posh-alike wife is running through his money and his entourage
with equal enthusiasm; and his very own Drugs Badger (a
kind of pumped-up Harvey on acid) is shovelling enough
powder up his nose to provide a decent secondary school
education for every peasant child in Bolivia.
The first half of It's All Gone... is less a feel-good
Human Traffic than an ultra-dark Human Multiple Pile-Up,
as Dowse gives every aspect of dance culture a damn good
slapping, from wide-eyed sunburned chavs to soulless managers
and venal record company execs. But he reserves his deepest
venom for the DJs themselves, as Kaye storms through the
role he was born to play: a self-destructive whirlwind
where every sluggish drip of sweat, every unfocused glare
burns from the screen like a laser through dry ice.
Unbelievably, things go from bad to worse, as Wilde's
perforated ear-drums finally give up the ghost during
an extreme studio session. Yep, it's Beethoven and Immortal
Beloved all over again, although Kaye brings a rage to
his disability that even Gary Oldman couldn't manage.
The scene where he finally tries to top himself with fireworks
is popcorn-dropping hilarious, but unfortunately marks
a turning point in the film, as Dowse swaps the Es for
the cheese.
In the space of half a hangover, Wilde turns into yet
another annoying cinematic super-cripple - discovering
love, life and super-sensitive feet with the help of a
beautiful lip-reader. There are a few self-mocking digs
at handicap chic, but the redemptive ending is pure, hands-in-the-air
Hollywood. Go see for the midnight dark comedy and Kaye's
powerhouse performance, but prepare yourself for when
it ultimately all goes Steve Wright.
copyright The Insight 2005 |
