REVIEW - DRUG WAR

A function fulfilled. After a curiously wayward opening, Johnnie To's Drug War settles into an efficient thriller, dedicating high energy and high focus to stock scenes, generating tension and hype (with a minimum of hype) and staging formulaic sequences with a refreshing lucidity and yet a satisfying complexity. To's bag of tricks is quality-based, not quantity-based, and he empties it methodically, allowing the viewer to fully appreciate the craft of each element therein. The film is just set-pieces, really, strung together by passages of characters reassembling to establish the next set-piece, all leading to a climactic shoot-out which you know is coming anyway. These set-pieces are exemplary, though - a hotel-set double-deception is structurally, formally exquisite, and the panoply of smaller details which so succinctly manufacture unease and cover all bases in advancing an ostensibly simple plot. To is working on several levels here: he is toying with us, with characters fooling one another left right and centre, as we watch their cunning plans gradually unfurl, and he is also working to move the narrative, and the action, forward. Plus, he is often relating two levels of narrative at once: what these characters see and understand, and what they're revealing that they see and understand. From an academic perspective, it's lovely stuff. From an entertainment perspective, To's still got our backs! Even the two shoot-outs in the second half are exceptionally well-orchestrated, with a biting immediacy that lifts them above the usual standard of this tired genre trope. Much of the film is pretty banal otherwise, with no effort expended on trussing up scenes which wouldn't particularly benefit from it, and so are left to fulfill their modest function alone. As a film entire, Drug War's function seems to be providing classy, intelligent trash, polished turds, if you will. The point being: you've seen turds like this before, but rarely quite this polished.