Trivisa (2016, Dir. Frank Hui, Jevons Au, Vicky Wong):
What inspired me was Shakespeare’s Macbeth. And if these three guys hadn’t gone into the restaurant at the same time, it would be a different ending. I always like coincidence.
In the beginning I gave the directors the theme of the movie, but in the end they drove it in very different directions. I don’t know why it’s like this! [Laughs.] It’s their idea, let the young people go – that was my feeling!
— Johnnie To
In Hong Kong, handovers happen, economic and political fortunes wax and wane, but Johnnie To endures. If the films of Ringo Lam and John Woo from the late ’80s and early ’90s could be called the Golden Age of Hong Kong gangster cinema, then To can be labelled the maestro of the genre’s Silver Age. Expanding past the boundaries of standard action formulae to embrace formalistic experimentation (The Mission, Fulltime Killer), philosophical ruminations (Running on Karma), sociopolitical commentary (Election, Exiled), and just plain bonkers bravado (Vengeance), To’s movies are brainy, knotty, and surprising — three qualities you don’t see much of from Hong Kong’s diminished movie industry these days. The latest product from To’s film factory, which has already opened to glowing reviews in Hong Kong, finds the maestro serving as producer, and three young-turk directors taking the reins. For all the youthful talent on hand, Trivisa is an unexpected throwback to the slithery thrillers of the colony’s heyday, with an existential twist as the cherry on top.
“Three people walk into a restaurant…” It sounds like the beginning of a joke, and Trivisa is a joke of a movie — if you can imagine the joke ending with a death rattle. Based loosely on the lives of notorious real-life gangsters, the film follows the fortunes of three criminals of very different backgrounds, all of them in danger of reaching the same exact destination of Nowheresville. Kwai Ching-hung (Lam Ka Tung) is a robber who has no compunction about gunning down cops in broad daylight when he’s threatened; at all other times he’s a frosty introvert who trusts nothing but his own dark instincts. Yip Kwok-foon (Richie Jen) is an outlaw who decides to semi-reform and aim for the big bucks through white-collar crime (smuggling electronics) rather than brandishing his signature AK-47 rifle. Flamboyant Cheuk Tsz-keung (Jordan Chan) makes his bread by kidnapping tycoons and extorting huge sums of money from their hapless fathers and spouses, but he’s beginning to suspect there’s more to life than being filthy rich and unchallenged. All three of the gangsters are looking for a big score, and when all three of them are sighted in the same restaurant by pure chance, the rumors start flying: Are they planning to join forces to pull off the crime to end all crimes?
The title of Trivisa refers to Buddhist teachings, and the “three poisons” that ruin the soul: confusion, greed and hatred. As per usual with To’s movies, the film’s schematic is carefully applied to its central characters. Kwai cares only about money, and isn’t above offing his partners in crime to get a bigger share for himself. Yip might be a man on the make, but when he runs headlong into a Chinese bureaucracy that’s more crooked than the crooks he’s accustomed to dealing with, his burgeoning rage threatens to undo everything he’s built. Cheuk is a loudmouth who enjoys tweaking the police and his marks at every turn, but when the rumors about him, Kwai and Yip reach his ears, he whips himself into a goofy fervor trying to track down the other two criminals, before getting sidetracked into a plot to dynamite the 1997 Hong Kong handover ceremony. All three of our would-be masterminds are bewildered by a universe that is leaving them in the dust; they may change their names and their modus operandi, but they can’t outrun the changes around them. Kwai has dreams about selling mobile phones in China (“I’ll be fatter than Chow Yun-Fat”), but he’s strictly small-time now, pulling out and counting his rapidly shrinking wad of bills at regular intervals. Though Yip fancies himself a man of the moment, seizing the opportunity for legitimate riches (“Stocks, real estate and chestnuts are more profitable” than stealing gold, a former comrade insists), he is unequipped to handle the delicate world of bribery and payoffs.
Trivisa is more about the simmering tension in the lives of its anti-heroes than gunplay (although the film is bookended by some nifty little shootouts). The storyline for each character is handled by a different director, and although editors Allen Leung and David Richardson skillfully intertwine all three plotlines, the film’s tone veers wildly from character to character. Yip’s story emerges as the most compelling of the lot, as director Jevons An piles up aggravating obstacles in the reformed desperado’s path. When an important shipment is impounded by mainland customs officials, the situation can only be remedied with expensive meals and drinks, and much bowing and scraping — and then the process is repeated when the shipment is stolen by the local police chief’s relatives. Simple acts like the presentation of an expensive vase as a gift to a high official become repetitive, absurdist gags. Veteran actor Lam Suet (a frequent presence in To’s movies) contributes a funny bit part as Yip’s mainland go-between, doing up obsequiousness to perfection. As Yip, Richie Jen works himself into a fine fury, and as he reminisces about the good old days when he could just blow someone away with his AK-47, we can’t help but smile over his identity crisis: sometimes a thug is just meant to be a thug.
Kwai’s story has its moments — Lam Ka Tung is appropriately steely as the mistrustful Kwai, and director Frank Hui paces his material well. He also benefits from an affecting performance by Wan Yeung-Ming as Kwai’s former comrade, now a respectable family man deathly afraid of getting sucked back into the gang life. Still, this segment of the film is undernourished when it comes to plot and character movement — there’s a whiff of cruel irony to the scene in which Kwai readies himself to burgle a local jewelry shop, while the jockey club across the street accumulates a record influx of cash for the day’s big horse race, but like everything else in Kwai’s story, the twist leads to a dead end. The film’s biggest, most outsized performance is reserved for Jordan Chan as Cheuk. In the past, Chan made his name playing lunk-headed low-lifes, and even though his pomp and swag are out of step with the rest of the movie, he has a ball hamming it up as a high-class scoundrel. It’s a shame that apart from a memorable opening scene in which he nearly tears a man’s ear off with his bare hands, he’s reduced to mugging and taking phone calls for most of the movie. Still, director Vicky Wong spices things up with some nifty editing legerdemain: a sequence in which Cheuk tracks down Kwai and Yip’s former colleagues for info about their whereabouts, forcing them to strip each time, each interrogation punctuated by a getaway from the overly inquisitive cops, has the kinetic energy of a Benny Hill skit.
When all’s said and done, Trivisa is a belated tale for a belated age. To and his three directors are well aware of the fact that Hong Kong ain’t what it used to be, and the film acknowledges that down the stretch — instead of ascending to higher levels of chaos and thrills, the story peaks with a single phone call between the main players, and then collapses in a heap, all of them doomed by the coincidence of their chance connection. Given the presence of China and Hong Kong’s unification in the story (a unification that is looking more like a losing proposition for Hong Kong by the day), it’s all too fitting that Trivisa finds our three Hongkie criminals ultimately unified in devastation and failure. The film lacks the rigor that characterizes To’s best work, but despite its shortcomings it’s an entertaining sketchbook of a movie, and a welcome reminder that Hong Kong still has the talent, and the potential, to blow our socks off with another crime classic in the future.
