If you think you like good movies and you don't know Milkyway Image, you're in trouble. This dark little production company slipped onto the scene in 1996 as the film bubble burst and the Asian Economic Crisis dragged Hong Kong almost to destruction. Together, director-producer Johnnie To, and writer-director Wai Ka-fai, made almost 50 movies that are a strand of dark, glittering diamonds.

The first, Beyond Hypothermia (1996), starred Wu Chien-lien as a freeze-dried hitwoman on the run. Shot with Korean money, the Milkyway style only sputtered sporadically, but the cold little minutes trickled down your spine. Intruder (1997) brought Wu Chien-lien back as a murderous Mainlander in a soaking wet horror flick that made Misery look like happy sunshine. It's Milkyway's biggest flop to date, and is that any surprise? Who really wants to unwind after a long day in a plummeting economy by watching a woman tape a cab driver to a chair and saw off his hands? Too Many Ways To Be No. 1 (1997), accidentally taken seriously by film weenies, is a Buddhist action comedy, and while it’s only Wai’s directorial effort it took enough risks for a director wrapping up his career who had nothing left to lose.

Director Patrick Yau made The Odd One Dies (1997) starring Carmen Lee and Takeshi Kaneshiro in a Buster Keaton take on a Wong Kar-wai flick set to a cha-cha beat, and then shot five scenes of The Longest Nite (1998), an unspecified portion of Expect the Unexpected (1998), and Where a Good Man Goes (1999) before To canned him. But first Yau brought some human warmth into To's fate-filled fear flicks. Longest Nite, the darkest of the three, is the mutant love child of a frantic back-alley scrump between Orson Welles' Touch of Evil and The Lady From Shanghai begging to be put out of its pitiable existence by one final, fatal bullet through the brain. Expect the Unexpected is an ultra-hip cop romance inspired by the then-popular Japanese television dramas that ends with a punch to the gut. Where a Good Man Goes is a bold journey into deep swamps of toxic masculinity before that syndrome even had a name. All three movies feature Lau Ching-wan displaying the acting chops that made him a star (Ruby Wong, Yo Yo Mung, and Lam Suet aren't bad, either).

A Hero Never Dies (1998) and The Mission (1999) are Milkyway's crowning glories of their first period. Hero achieves spaghetti western grandeur with Leon Lai and Lau Ching-wan tearing apart John Woo's legacy of heroic bloodshed while The Mission is an action movie haiku as five of Hong Kong's best character actors reduce their performances and gangster film setpieces to their simplest, most economical gestures.

Tired of flops (and despite critical acclaim, these movies were all flops) To hired superstar Andy Lau, teamed him with Lau Ching-wan and put the two in a lightly-doomed thriller with a softshoe soul, Running Out of Time (1999) which became a big hit, and this is when Milkyway split. If it was Picasso this would be the end of his Blue Period and the start of his clown paintings. Needing You (2000), Help!!! (2000), Love On a Diet (2001), and Wu Yen (2001) are some of the most fabulous crowd-pleasers to come out of post-2000 Hong Kong, and all of them made a lot of money and display a lot of verve. None, however, recapture the dark, doomed, super-stylized gems that had carried the company through the previous four years. Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai make movies together now, sharing the directorial duties and they’ve since entered a third phase of dark, more sophisticated and philosophical films like Running on Karma (2003) and Election (2005) alongside their New Year’s blockbusters. Their movies are still good, but no one can forget the period when during Hong Kong's darkest hour, some of its best filmmakers decided that the only cure was to get darker.