Yi ngoi
Director: Pou-Soi Cheang
Writer: Kam-Yuen Szeto, Lik-Kei Tang
Cast: Louis Koo, Richie Ren, Shui-Fan Fung, Michelle Ye, Suet Lam
Part of: Viennale, Soi Cheang Tribute

Plot:
The Brain (Louis Koo) is the leader of a group of assassins consisting of Fatty (Suet Lam), Uncle (Shui-Fan Fung) and Woman (Michelle Ye). They specialize in orchestrating hits that look like accidents. During their latest job Fatty is killed in an accident. But Brain doesn’t believe that it really was an accident. He starts shadowing their last client to uncover who has it in for him and his group.

Yi ngoi is a very cool film and Brain is a very cool character. The idea with the accident killings is pretty awesome, though they don’t spend much time with it. And the movie unfolds quite nicely.

The film mostly lives off of its coolness. Brain is so cool, he can wear a vest and 70s glasses and still be kinda sexy. [Quite the achievement. Even Ryan Gosling lost against the 70s glasses in Blue Valentine.] The film music is cool. The accidents are really cool.

And I would have loved to see some more accidents. They were a thing of beauty. But it wasn’t really necessary for the film in the end, so that we only got to see a few was okay. [Maybe I’ll just watch Final Destination instead, for that kick.]

But the movie also falls a bit flat in a few places. It doesn’t treat its women very well – there’s only three of them: one is already dead at the beginning of the film (she was fridged), the other two die in the course of the film (again one of them is fridged). And the female assassin is the only one of them who doesn’t get a code name and just remains the “Woman.”

[SPOILER] That Brain is imagining the whole conspiracy against him and his group was quite obvious. It’s always a dead give-away when people start putting random things on the wall and getting out the red crayon. [/SPOILER] But I’m not sure that we were actually supposed to be surprised by that anyway. In either case the story progresses nicely and I was caught up in it.

Summarising: A very nice watch.