A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Thursday, August 27, 2026

Full Alert (Ringo Lam, 1997)

Lau Ching-wan in Full Alert

Cast: Lau Ching-wan, Francis Ng, Amanda Lee, Jack Kao, Monica Chan, Chin Ka Lok, Yung Kam-cheong, Raymond Cho, Emily Kwan Po-wai. Screenplay: Ringo Lam, Lau Wing-kin, Poon Yuen-leung. Cinematography: Ardy Lam. Art direction: S.P. Choo, C.C. Wong. Film editing: Angie Lam, Marco Mak. Music: Peter Kam.

There are the usual thriller set pieces, car chases and gun battles, in Ringo Lam's Full Alert, but the film really hinges on the psychological twinning of cop and criminal. Everything in the film builds toward a final showdown between Pao (Lau Ching-wan), the cop in charge of the pursuit of Mak Kwan (Francis Ng), an explosives expert who escapes from prison after Pao arrests him. Both Pao and Mak are obsessive types, and an early confrontation establishes that both are haunted by guilt. Mak has a partner, Chung (Amanda Lee), whom he loves, and Pao has a wife (Monica Chan) and child. Lam deftly plays on these parallels throughout the film, and Lau and Ng give their characters full intensity. The result is a high-powered movie that feels more realistic than it actually is.  

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