PTU

Hong Kong, 2003 / restored 2025, 88’, Cantonese

Directed by: Johnnie To
Screenplay: Yau Nai-hoi, Au Kin-yee
Cinematography (color): Cheng Siu-keung
Editing: Law Wing-cheong
Art Direction: Jerome Fung
Music: Chung Chi-wing
Producer: Johnnie To

Cast: Simon Yam (Mike Ho), Maggie Shiu (Kat), Lam Suet (Lo Sa), Raymond Wong (PTU team member), Ruby Wong (Leigh Cheng), Wong Tin-lam (Uncle Chung), Eddie Ko (Eye Ball), Lo Hoi-pang (Bald Head), Chung Chi-shing (Ponytail), Liu Chi-ting (robber at payphone), Soi Cheang (undercover cop)

Date of First Release in Territory: April 17th, 2003

Soon after reinvigorating Hong Kong crime cinema with a string of stylish thrillers – among them the 1998-99 classics A Hero Never Dies, Running Out of Time and The Mission – Johnnie To launched a passion project with his cop saga PTU. Made over three years in gaps between shooting star-studded hits, PTU became an experimental creative outlet for To, opening up a nighttime filmmaking playground across the city while tearing the police film away from convention and into morally murky grounds.

In the evening of September 15, 2000, Police Tactical Unit Team B heads out for patrols. Trouble’s brewing as young thugs headed by Ponytail (Chiu Chi-shing) are having a meal in the company of cop Lo Sa (Lam Suet) and an assassin. When one of the hoodlums damages Lo’s car, the officer gives chase only to fall in an alleyway and wake up with his gun missing. Meanwhile, back at the eatery Ponytail is knifed – a killing that’ll set off recriminations in the triad scene.

Team B is among the first to help sergeant Lo, and leader Mike Ho (Simon Yam) deploys the police officers’ code of silence: they’ll keep quiet about the missing revolver for now, and Ho will do the explaining if it’s not found by dawn. As Ho’s team and Lo track down gangsters in hopes of retrieving the gun, detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department sense something fishy with the PTU team but get stymied at every turn.

Early in PTU Ho points out, “Anyone wearing the uniform is one of our own.” Johnnie To then zeroes in on cops’ cover-up efforts, known in the US as the “blue wall of silence”, and leans in on shady practices. It’s not just a missing gun that’s under wraps: police brutality, killing CCTV during a raid and planting evidence all happen too. And as he raises these scenes against the gangster world, To presents cops and triads alike operating as gangs. When the police eventually do stop criminals, the moment is merely brought on by fate rather than sleuthing.

To’s previous noirs like A Hero Never Dies primed moviegoers for visuals laden with style, and To delivered more with the stripped-back PTU. Streets were spotlit in high contrast, and the director deployed theatrical choreography – witness the four-minute sequence when officers dance up a staircase. To’s shooting approach (using minimal crew, briefing actors on their scenes just before filming, and keeping ideas for later plot lines secret) enabled an impromptu feel while keeping up brooding atmospherics. The dark look and sense of chaos echoed public moods in Hong Kong, where the first post-handover administration was fumbling and the economy was being hit by shocks like a collapse in property prices. (The gloom worsened around PTU’s release: the SARS disease crisis arrived a month before the film came out, and proposed national security legislation had many citizens on edge.) But there’s humour too, not least in the shambolic sergeant Lo, played with a cheeky charm by Lam Suet in his first top-billed role.

PTU turned out to be a landmark work for Johnnie To and his Milkyway Image production house. After To shifted gear from his grim late-1990s thrillers to a string of clever, hugely popular hits starting with 2000’s Needing You…, PTU saw him settle on a process of slotting in personal exercises among his big-ticket crowd pleasers. Now restored in 4K by iST in Hong Kong, To’s PTU is back on the big screen for another round, ready once more to subvert expectations of the Hong Kong policier.


Johnnie To

Writer-director and producer To directed his first movie, The Enigmatic Case, in 1980. In 1996, To co-founded production company Milkyway Image, working closely with writer-director Wai Ka-fai. The company drew attention for its thrillers such as A Hero Never Dies (1998) and The Mission (1999) before starting a run of commercially successful films with the release of To and Wai’s 2000 box-office champ Needing You... To has since gone on to find wider international recognition for movies including PTU (2003), Election (2005) and Exiled (2007).


SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

1980 – The Enigmatic Case

1993 – The Heroic Trio

1998 – A Hero Never Dies

1999 – The Mission

2000 – Needing You... (co-director)

2003 – PTU

2005 – Election

2011 – Life Without Principle

2015 – Office

2019 – Chasing Dream