Summary
Cheang Soi’s stylish and gritty thriller is a throwback to a type of Hong Kong thriller we’ve not seen in a long time.
The promise of a Category III film from Cheang Soi is something to get excited about. The director of the Monkey King series and SPL II delves into the restricted category of Hong Kong cinema to deliver what is arguably one of the most stylish pieces of violent detective fiction in the country’s prolific film history.
Based on the Chiense novel Wisdom Tooth by Lei Mi, it follows veteran cop Cham Lau (Gordan Lam Ka-tung) and rookie Will Ren (Mason Lee) chasing down a serial killer with a hand fetish. To aid them, they’ve enlisted the help of criminal Wong To (Liu Cya), who still feels indebted to Cham for a tragedy she caused his family years before.
Opening with an atmospheric scene set in a slum, it’s safe to say that this is a far cry from the polished action/detective films that the Hong Kong and Mainland box offices have been favouring of late. This is a gritty lived-in world, and Cheang wastes very little time in immersing the viewer in its darkest corners.
It helps that those corners are gorgeous to look at. Despite the promotional material originally suggesting a colour film, Soi presents LIMBO in a glorious high-contrast black and white. Even when standing knee-deep in a trash heap in the pouring rain, Cheang manages to find the angles that make it look good. There’s one sequence in a parking tower, as veteran photographer Cheng Siu Keung (Election, Drug War) follows its spiral upwards, as if tracing the notches running down a city’s spine.
The characters are a little murkier, with Cheang making his cast go to some emotionally inky places. Cham certainly doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty, straight up beating down perps and Wong To with equal impunity. Of course, it’s the latter who gets put through the wringer the most. Indeed, any woman who appears on screen is either a victim, relentlessly assaulted physically and mentally in several scenes that are uncomfortable to watch.
Yet all of this gets swept aside in a series of action scenes that are really the heart of the film. There’s one sequence in which Cham chases down a suspect, neatly transitioning from car chase to on foot in a seamlessly frenetic series of moments. There’s also a few hand-to-hand fighting moments, including a knife versus machete moment involving Liu Cya.
The action climax, in which our hero fights the killer in the rain, is a relentless showdown that should rightfully be praised as one of the greats. In fact, this goes for all of the action and set-pieces peppered throughout LIMBO. It’s just that the linking segments don’t always feel cohesive in this stylish yet scattered outing. Still, it’s a welcome throwback for Hong Kong cinema, pointing the way back to a time when they ruled the world in this kind of genre picture.
2021 | Hong Kong | DIRECTOR: Soi Cheang | WRITER: Au Kin Yee | CAST: Lam Ka Tung, Liu Cya, Mason Lee, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi | DISTRIBUTOR: Sun Entertainment Culture, Berlinale 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1-5 March 2021 (GER)
