JIANG HU - THE TRIAD ZONE (2000)
Directed by: Dante Lam
Starring: Tony Leung Kar-fai, Sandra Ng, Roy Cheung, Eason Chan, Anthony Wong, Eric Tsang, Ann Hui, Chan Fai-hung, Richard Ng

Hands down the best movie of 2000, there're series of scenes in the middle of this movie with Tony Leung and Roy Cheung, Sandra Ng and Anthony Wong, and Tony Leung and Eric Tsang that have more to say about love, duty, and disappointment than any ten films made last year. A bizarre classic from its opening shot to its final credits this is the kind of flick that makes you fall in love with its cheating, sideshow self: possessing an Oklahoma heart as big as all outdoors but always willing to interrupt a two-hankie moment for a gag.

Directed by Gordon Chan's assistant director, Dante Lam (who has since gone on to become the mega-action blockbuster maestro of Hong Kong and Mainland film), this movie has the kind of life to it that Chan wished his Okinawa Rendezvous had. Lantern-jawed Tony Leung Kar-fai stars as Jim Yuen, a triad leader in a loud suit who’s marked for assassination. Trying to unravel the mystery of who's after his hide he winds up re-examining everything he took for granted about those around him: from his wife (Sandra Ng, at her termagant best), to his bodyguard (Roy Cheung) to his lawyer (Chan Fai-hung, in the role he was born to play). An experimental action-comedy that has the sad heart of a mountain-dwelling Buddhist monk, JIANG HU uses Brother Jim's predicament to sum up the predicament of pretty much every single one of us. Flashbacks to his salad days mugging folks in London with Sandra Ng, past interactions with other sad sack triad bosses, conversations about who did what to whom ten years ago, and brief interludes with ancillary characters flutter across Jim's face like shadows. The mysterious little grace notes of a lucky bastard's life pile up, but at the end of the day you've just got Tony Leung looking at his life, all piled up in broken pieces, and disco dancing in the dark on top of a table.

The movie is also a comedy. A really, really great comedy that recalls the straightlaced parodies of Hong Kong genre films that came out in the early 90's (Flirting Scholar, Last Hero in China, Cheez N’Ham). JIANG HU: THE TRIAD ZONE is the first and last word on triad movies, managing an outrageous scatological sight gag one minute, asking for a respectful moment of silence the next. The action scenes that crop up are well-staged (as one would expect from a Gordon Chan protege) but they go places that Gordon Chan would never dare (one ends with the arrival of the God Kwan, played by Anthony Wong).

Silly, stupendous, hilarious, and heartbreaking, this is the kind of Hong Kong movie no one makes much anymore. And we’re all the poorer for it.