PTU: Police Tactical Unit
Into the Perilous Night...
Johnny To has already established himself as one of the better directors to come out of Hong Kong in recent years and he’s on fine form with this stylish crime thriller.
Following a run-in with a gang of thugs led by Ponytail, Sergeant “Fatty” Lo (Lam Suet) loses his gun and turns to the brutally efficient Sergeant Mike Ho (Simon Yam) of the PTU to help him retrieve it. It’s late and Lo agrees to search for the gun until dawn, after which he will follow procedure and report the missing weapon.
Things take a turn for the worse as Fatty’s search for his gun intersects with a gangland assassination that threatens to escalate into an all out war on the streets of the city. Of course, a murder such as this doesn’t go unnoticed by the police and the CID, led by Inspector Leigh Cheng (Ruby Wong) becomes involved. Cheng is also very interested to know what Fatty and the PTU are up to…
Taking place over the course of a single night and against a background of dark and often deserted streets, PTU has a very noir feel which comes across in both the cinematography and the pacing of the film.
To’s cinematographer, Siu-keung Cheng’s portrayal of Hong Kong is remarkably unique. The shops have closed and most of the population are at home, leaving the PTU operating in an almost eerie netherworld. It’s a look which, while being neither tense nor intrusive in itself, manages to convey a genuinely menacing airr throughout.
The pacing of the film is also remarkably restrained, almost static in places, and it’s with this steady progress through the accumulating events that To reveals the casual brutality of the police. And in the middle of it all is Yam’s frighteningly impassive sergeant for whom every beating is nothing more than another step towards achieving his goal.
Although PTU does feel like a character driven film, the characters portrayed are very much archetypes rather than rounded individuals and, as coincidence and bad luck pile up on each other, it becomes increasingly apparent that they are not in control of events. But, bound together by overlapping loyalties, they continue to try to clean up the growing mess.
All this makes for a very fatalistic crime drama which touches on themes of honour, loyalty and friendship as it progresses, almost fatalistically, towards a genuinely explosive climax.
PTU: Police Tactical Unit may be a little light on substance, but the style of the film more than makes up for this.
Saturday 22 Mar 2008 | Paul Pritchard | Crime, Drama
