International Premiere | Out of Competition | Restored Classics
Hong Kong, 1979 / restored 2025, 87’, Cantonese, English
The System will immediately follow the Made in Hong Kong: A Pair of Shorts program.
Directed by: Peter Yung
Screenplay: Peter Yung, Lee Sien
Cinematography (color): Peter Yung, Tom Lau
Editing: Wong Yee-shun
Production Design: Oliver Wong
Producer: Peter Yung
Cast: Pak Ying (Inspector Chan Cheuk), Sek Kin (Tam), Chiao Chiao (Auntie Ha), Chung Chi-keung (detective), Lam Wei-kee (Hung)
Date of First Release in Territory: December 12th, 1979
Based on research that he conducted for documentaries about the narcotics trade, photographer and director Peter Yung’s 1979 dramatic feature directorial debut The System is the Hong Kong New Wave’s answer to the anti-narcotics sub-genre of cops-and-robbers films. Specifically, the film depicts the co-dependent relationship between the police and informants from the criminal world.
Unreleased on any digital home video format, The System has only been seen on old VHS copies (a scan from an unsubtitled 1988 American VHS release has been floating around online) and at sporadic retrospective screenings. Thanks to a new restoration commissioned by Hong Kong’s M+ museum, it can now be readily rediscovered by a new generation of audiences.
Like any other police officer, Narcotics Bureau Inspector Chan (Pak Ying) uses favours to get informants to provide tips on the big fishes. His latest potential informant is Tam (an incredible turn by the legendary Sek Kin), a consigliere to drug kingpin Hung. Using Tam’s drug addiction as leverage, Chan forces Tam to provide intelligence on Hung’s operation. However, their partnership is a tumultuous one that can’t seem to produce any real results.
As Chan says in one scene, the problem with these partnerships is that law enforcement has to rely on career criminals to catch bigger criminals, which means the informants always remain criminals. The police may say informants are a necessary evil even today, but Yung depicts such Faustian partnerships as untenable and, in worst cases, mutually destructive. In Yung’s world, the criminals and police are equally savvy to each other’s tactics, and the war on drugs is ultimately a war of attrition. Yung’s storytelling style may feel dated or didactic at times (it’s a film from 1979, after all), but its criticism of law enforcement policy was so bold at the time that Yung had to appeal to the censorship authority multiple times to get the film approved.
True to Yung’s roots as a journalist and documentarian, The System shows people not in black or white, but in different shades of gray. Tam may work for the wrong side of the law, but he is also depicted as a devoted family man and a loyal lover (the casual portrayal of his philandering ways is another sign of the times). Despite being the good guys, Inspector Chan and his fellow police officers don’t hesitate to pull strings and bend the rules to break a case. Law enforcement officers also make multiple references to not worrying about the Independent Commission Against Corruption, the anti-corruption agency that was formed several years prior to production.
Unlike its genre counterparts, The System paints a more realistic picture of policing, showing officers spending more time locating criminals (street names are an important part of two sequences) than confronting them in dramatic fights. As co-cinematographer Yung keeps his handheld camera trained on real locations, and synchronised sound recording enhances the film’s documentary feel.
While watching The System, I was reminded of fellow New Wave director Alex Cheung’s Cops and Robbers (also from 1979) and Man on the Brink (1981), as well as later cops-and-robbers films by Derek Yee, such as One Nite in Mongkok (2004) and Protégé (2007). Even when they seem like mass entertainment on the surface (Protégé, for example, was a Lunar New Year release), these films see the world through a bleak fatalistic lens and reject wishy-washy concepts of good triumphing over evil. Utterly captivating and morally complex, The System easily deserves to be in the same conversations as those great films.
Peter Yung
Peter Yung (b. 1949) began his artistic career as a photographer and studied cinematography in the US under acclaimed cinematographer James Wong Howe. In addition to teaching and photography work, Yung produced and shot documentaries in the 1970s. He made his dramatic narrative directorial debut with the self-funded 1979 film
The System. His 1981 film
Life After Life earned 7 nominations at the Golden Horse Awards. In 1984, he returned to independent filmmaking for greater creative autonomy, but he retired from directing after releasing a re-edited version of his 1982 film
Souls of the Wind, renamed
Journey to the Cossacks (1989).
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
1979 – The System
1981 – Life After Life
1981 – The Rickshaw Boy
1987 – Warlords of the Golden Triangle (co-director)
1989 – Journey to the Cossacks