Efforts to nurture new Hong Kong talent have gained a significant boost with
Trivisa,
a striking thriller helmed by three filmmakers who rose up via the
city’s Fresh Wave shorts competition. Produced by director-producer
Johnnie To and his key collaborator Yau Nai-hoi, and named after
Buddhism’s “three poisons” of greed, hatred and delusion, Trivisa saw
three young directors separately shoot stories inspired by notorious
local crime figures, then weave the footage into a seamless whole.
Trivisa’s
first bad guy is Kwai Ching-hung (Lam Ka-tung), a character drawn from
the story of cop killer Kwai Ping-hung and filmed by Frank Hui. After
gunning down police officers in the mid-1980s, Kwai drops out of the
limelight to live under a series of false names. Later, as the 1997 Hong
Kong handover nears, the shadowy figure sets his sights on robbing a
jewellery store with help from across the border.
Another roughie
arrives in the Jevons Au-directed tale of Yip Kwok-foon (Richie Jen),
based loosely on famed thief Yip Kai-foon – a figure best known for
using an AK-47 as he robbed jewellers and took on the police in the
early 1990s. After laundering a haul of gold, Yip chances across the
trade for smuggled electronic goods in China, and he heads there to set
up business.
Far flashier than Kwai and Yip is the third principal,
Cheuk Tze-keung (Jordan Chan), in a story filmed by Vicky Wong. For
Trivisa’s hometown crowd, Cheuk’s story is most familiar, as it draws on
that of “Big Spender” Cheung Tze-keung, famed kidnapper of tycoons’
offspring and, by the late 1990s, the subject of two local films.
Cheuk’s plot picks up as he blackmails a business leader and drives off
with great bags of cash strapped to his Lamborghini. He’s living large
but, as he puts it, he’s always seeking new mountains to climb.
As
the handover approaches, Cheuk fears there’ll be slim pickings in the
future and hatches a plan for the “Three Kings of Thieves” to carry out a
monster hit before the change of sovereignty. The underworld rumour
mill is fed with news that the three will work together, and Cheuk even
sets up a hotline for the other two to reach him so they can get the
ball rolling.
With the three story lines bookended by
handover-related news footage – first British PM Margaret Thatcher
speaking on the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and finally the last
governor bidding the territory farewell – Trivisa combines slick
genre cinema with a look back to historic times and their social
setting.
The three lead characters come to reflect wider moods in Hong
Kong – both pre-handover and today – as senses of changing fortunes,
uncertainty and disillusionment run throughout. Cheuk, for instance,
moves with a confident swagger to evoke glitzier times of the past,
while Yip, in seeking big China opportunities, comes up against a system
that’s rotten at every turn.
Beyond the social and historical angles, Trivisa
excels as thriller filmmaking. The three leads are distinctive, with
Jordan Chan delightful in his larger-than-life character, Richie Jen
juggling menace and helplessness, and Lam Ka-tung especially sinister.
The filmmakers inject black comedic touches and strong action sequences
smoothly, and the plot’s exploration of fate recalls vital past
productions from To,
Yau and their partner in film Wai Ka-fai. As it
moves sure-footedly between material both darkly entertaining and
thought-provoking, Trivisa becomes more than just an
new-generation showcase for Hui, Au and Wong: it’s a work that can hold
its own among Hong Kong’s top-class crime pictures.