I’ll open this review with the way I should end it. This is the best Hong Kong Thriller I have seen in a long time. Highly recommended.
“Beast Stalker” weaves the tale of a rather driven and unlikeable
cop, Tong (Nicholas Tse) who is involved in a rescue attempt of a kidnapped girl that ends badly. Fatally badly. Driven into depression, he attempts to find redemption when the girls twin sister is also kidnapped by a down on his luck and wanting out gun for hire (Nick Cheung).
I have kept the synopsis rather short and sweet as I really do not want to give too much away. However, this is the kind of film that Rollercoaster was invented as a description for. It has action, emotion, and tension by the bucket load.
Tse’s cop is a fantastic character. Initially arrogant and unlikeable, he alienates all around him by his driven attitude, exemplified by the discovery that one of his subordinates we see him berate later is actually a member of his family. When he goes looking for help from his old team, we see them respond in a realistic way – there may be respect, but there is no love lost
Even better is Cheung’s villain. One of the finest screen bad guys I have ever seen, here is a killer that is beset by tragedy – his eyesight is failing, his wife is totally paralysed and his reputation is in tatters. But the character is so so well drawn that although you cannot help but feel sympathy for him, you never want to wish for his redemption.
Dante Lam directs the film with aplomb. I believe he has been a little maligned in the past for being a little more than ok (I don’t have an awful lot of experience with him, other than adoring the opening sequence in “The Twins Effect”), but here he pulls off the action, the drama, and at least two fantastic set pieces (one of the best car crashes ever – so good we get to see it twice). Furthermore, near the end, he teases us with the option of the worst tragedy of all. I won’t spoil it – but the fact he could have successfully gone either way speaks volumes for the overall brilliance of the film.
There are great performances all over. Special respect should go to Miao Pu – she spends most of the film in bed unable to move little more than her face, but she is able to extract a winning performance – you feel her pain, both physical and the emotional pain at the actions of her other half.
It has but two faults. The English title (like so many Chinese films) has a title that bears little to no resemblance to either the original (which is something more akin to “Witness”), which I think might mean that many that would enjoy the film will not even give it a second look. Secondly, I found the early part of the story a little hard to follow – it was not clear to me that the two young girls were twins – but this may has been me overcompensating for the fact I was worried I thought two people looked that same (i.e. the Lawyer mother of the twins), when in fact they were indeed the same person.
As I said at the beginning, this is a fantastic movie. You could complain that it is a genre film, aspects of which you have seen before – but it is constructed in such a brilliant manner, with fantastic performances.
Gweilo Ramblings 