P.T.U. 2

Given until sunrise to recover his stolen pistol, Sergeant Lo hits Hong Kong's late-night streets. Johnnie To, the director of Fulltime Killer and Exiled, is back with this award-winning cop drama
Lardy Sergeant Lo (Suet) is having a bad night. First his car is vandalised with yellow paint and then Ponytail's gang attack him and run off with his firearm. Officer Mike (Yam, another To regular) and his PTU (Police Tactical Unit) discover Lo beaten and bruised in a back alley. With a promotion looming, Lo is desperate not to report his gun missing. Against the better judgment of a more by-the-book PTU officer (Siu), Mike gives him until the end of the night shift to get his gun back. Things get more complicated for Lo when Ponytail is murdered by a rival gang and CID officer Leigh Cheng (Wong) is called in to investigate and begins to suspect that the bumbling sergeant is covering something up. The search for Ponytail's goons and the lost gun sparks gang turf wars and police departmental in-fighting. As events spiral out of control, Lo finds himself caught in the middle of the cross fire. Nineteen-eighty-five to 1995 was a golden period for Hong Kong action cinema. It was a time of matchstick chewing cops, hair gel-obsessed hitmen and Triad gangs that looked like extras from a Duran Duran video. Homoerotic macho fables from John Woo (A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Hard Boiled) and Ringo Lam (City On Fire, Full Contact) spawned the 'heroic bloodshed' genre. By the late 1990s, with Woo and Lam relocated to LA, Hong Kong cinema went off the boil. But with 1999's buddy gangster hit The Mission, director Johnnie To proved there was still some life left in bullet ballets. With over 30 directing and producing credits to his name, To and his Milky Way production company have emerged as a guiding light in the industry after the former British colony's handover in 1997. To's latest offering does little to keep that flame burning bright. PTU smacks of style over content. It contains nothing that advances the march of 'heroic bloodshed' cinema. If anything, it just keeps the genre stomping on the spot: looking good but going nowhere. After the success of The Mission, To has been repeatedly let down by hollow scripts (just see 2001's bloated and glossy misfire Fulltime Killer). In the absence of much dialogue and a propelling narrative, To leaves the storytelling up to the images. Thankfully PTU is a visually stunning film with a moody noir atmosphere. Usually Hong Kong is shown as a bustling, neon-lit metropolis but here it appears as a shadowy ghost town. It's just a shame that the characters aren't as well thought out as the netherworld they inhabit. While bumbling Sergeant Lo is a well-rounded figure (quite literally) and Officer Mike has gritty definition, the rest of the cast are only ever outlines. In the main, the PTU troops are a bland, shapeless group, shuffling around like target practice cut-outs. The real disappointment here is Lo's adversary CID Cheng. When she first appears on the crime scene, Cheng has all the swagger of Helen Mirren's Jane Tennison from 'Prime Suspect'. Sadly, she never realises her powder-keg potential and remains a sidelined irritant. The restaurant scene at the start of the film is a great set-piece of comedy and tension culminating in good old-fashioned violence. Ponytail and his gang of hoods play a status game of musical chairs with Sergeant Lo, forcing a seemingly innocent diner to keep swapping tables. Every time a mobile phone rings, all the characters automatically check their phones. The last of these calls is for the lone diner who receives orders to assassinate Ponytail in grisly style, resulting in an amusing attempt by Ponytail to drive himself to hospital with a kitchen knife stuck in his back. The other standout moment is the blistering finale that has hoodlums, CID, PTU and Lo shooting it out in slow motion. Worthy of particular mention is the stunning sound design: flying bullets blast through the air like jet engines. The elegantly choreographed bloodbath gives vintage Woo a serious run for his money. The problem is that while these bookend moments demonstrate impressive filmmaking skills, what happens in between them (i.e.: the bulk of the film) is drab in comparison; the plot is far too convoluted and, as a result, hard to follow or even care about. Also in setting the film over the course of one night, To allows the film to unfold at an overly protracted pace. While this brings a sense of reality to the proceedings, there are moments that play like dead time; in particular one interminable stairwell climb sequence.
Verdict A delirious start and finish is let down by the dull middle section. Its haphazard and meandering plot could do with a Hollywood shake-up. Petition for a Scorsese remake now.