By Chris Hyde

August 12, 2003

Johnnie To's morally ambiguous police procedural returns the Hong Kong filmmaker to form with a vengeance.

One of the top filmmakers from Hong Kong that chose to stay after the colony's 1997 return to China, Johnnie To Kei-fung has remained a bright spot for an industry that watched haplessly as much of its top talent departed for the bright lights of Hollywood. Working tirelessly as both producer and director, To has had a hand in many of the finest productions coming out of the area over the last decade, and he nearly always seems to be in the running for some kind of prize at the annual Hong Kong Film Awards. The director is proficient in a number of genres, blending violent actioners and crime films with lighter, celebrity-studded romantic comedies. Of late, this breezier fare has been slightly more prominent in the filmmaker's output, and after last year's Fat Choi Spirit and My Left Eye Sees Ghosts, some fans were openly questioning whether To had begun to go a bit soft. But with this year's, PTU he now returns to the darker side of human endeavors, tackling a vicious world filled with criminally inclined thugs and cops with decidedly impure motives.

PTU's setting is mostly the nighttime streets of Hong Kong, a backlit wonderland where security forces patrol in lockstep. As handled by To, the territory is artificially mythic, with directorial style taking precedence over any enforced raw sense of reality. Inside this brutal and otherworldly space, a twisty tale filled with arch observations and concealed motivation plays out, and while To's return to the crime film here doesn't quite reach the heights of his previous films The Mission or Running Out of Time, it's nice to know that he's still capable of doing more than churning out happy-go-lucky romantic comedy fare. Those fans who worried that the director had permanently left behind the gangster/cop space can now rest assured that this master of the genre picture has not in any way abandoned the sort of movies upon which his stellar reputation is based.

Hong Kong stalwart Simon Yam (who can also now be seen in American theaters as Chen Lo in the Tomb Raider sequel) plays a man in charge of a Police Tactical Unit that walks the nighttime streets of the island's metropolis, ostensibly to protect its citizens from the vagaries of crime. While patrolling one evening, he and his squad (which includes Maggie Siu and Hong Kong film regular Raymond Wong) come across a detective (Lam Suet) who has been beaten by criminals and managed to lose his gun in the process. The detective knows that if he can't find his gun by the next day that a report will need to be filed with his superiors; he also knows that this report will cost him the promotion he is otherwise shortly to receive. He enlists the help of the leader of the PTU in his search, knowing only that the thugs who stomped him are the minions of a gang leader named Ponytail. Unfortunately Ponytail himself soon turns up very dead, and to complicate matters further, that murder investigation is put under the direction of a highly suspicious CID detective named Leigh Cheung (Ruby Wong Cheuk-ling).

There are other threads of plot woven into this story of one single night on the streets of Hong Kong, most notable among them a perhaps unrelated big-time bank robbery and another gang leader that wishes to negotiate a surrender with Lam Suet's detective, as he believes he will be blamed for the death of Ponytail. The narrative takes the form of alternating scenes between groups of characters who also occasionally stumble across the others in the story, though it's all ultimately held together by the device of Sergeant Lo Sa's search for his missing weapon. In the hands of the film's capable director, the many machinations of the story remain coherent even amongst the myriad characters and their differing motives, and the sometimes questionable operating tactics of both the criminals and the forces of security are depicted in an unflinching manner that betrays no real favor toward either side. This film does for the most part center on the actions of the police, however, making it contrast with the director's masterpiece The Mission, where it's the gangsters who are on center stage. To has in fact said in interviews that he does see PTU as somewhat of a aesthetic companion piece to that earlier film, and that he envisions a third movie in this loosely associated "trilogy" where the story will take up the viewpoint of the women rather than the criminals or the police.

While the story of PTU is fine in and of itself, one of the main attractions of this film lies in the fantastic settings that To employs to weave his tale. Using both visual flourish and auditory minimalism, the director sets a measured, almost languid pace that makes the occasional punctuations of violent behavior all the more powerful. The Hong Kong milieu here as depicted by To is a far cry from the bustling metropolis usually seen in films from this region -- for instead of traffic filled, noisy streets, the byways of PTU are deserted and silent, the only sounds often being the crunch of jackbooted footsteps or the desolate, impersonal ringing of a cell phone. These quiet setups allow the desperate mood of the film's central quest to play out with great impact, and though some of the cast's acting is a bit stiff, in the main the work is solid enough to make the story and its denouement believable and entertaining.

With its cinematic success, what PTU ultimately represents is a return by a landmark Hong Kong filmmaker to the rough territory where he has created his most lasting work. Though his lighter romantic comedy fare also has its attractions, there's little doubt that it's in the action picture space that his great talent truly shines through. This instance doesn't quite measure up to the past films that are his career highlights, but merely having To come back to the world where he truly belongs is reason enough to overlook its occasional flaws. Overall, it's an intriguing story filled with surprising turns whose deliberate tone and spectacular setting lend the character's actions inside the tale a potent weight. This is the sort of material upon which Johnnie To built his much-deserved reputation as one of Hong Kong's greatest figures, and it's refreshing to see him once again operate within the rubric of the crime picture. Let's just hope that he doesn't wait too long this time to again return to this territory -- as PTU amply demonstrates, it's in this genre that the director has found his most comfortable fit.