Adaptation of the series of successful manhuasAndy Seto, City of Darkness (Twillight of the Warriors: Walled in) Comes to distribute a new slap in martial arts cinema. A year after the fantasy Mad Fate (2023) and two before thriller Limbo (2022) with both graphic and symbolic blackness, the Hong Kong master Soi Cheang signed a new film of formidable efficiency. NIFFF's preview selection, City of the Darkness will be wanted by the time it is released on September 4 in France.
Kung Fu Master
From the start, Soi Cheang sets out the rules. «I'm warning you. Don't worry. Troublemakers die » warned Cyclone, the legend of the underworld and protector of the Kowloon Citadel, the Chinese enclave that ruled in the middle of the former British colony of Hong Kong. Before the city was handed over to China in 1997, an extensive demolition of this overcrowded ghetto ended the reign of cartels in the early 1990s. The latter had the sad reputation of commanding the city with their finger and eye. The colonial policy of laissez-faire would have allowed crime to flourish. A hell that historians believe should be tempered because life was partly self-organised, especially for water and electricity sharing and not necessarily systemic violence.
It is in this peaty setting that Self Cheang chose to develop his new revenge story. The director tells the story of a young refugee, Chen Lok-kwun (Raymond Lam), who found himself in spite of himself prisoner of the fortified city after having been conned by rival Triads. From thread to needle, Chen Lok-kwun makes friends with his new family in Kowloon before a sinister vendetta affair leads the Triads back to war. A mythical city obliged, it was necessary to carry out a work of titanium research to reproduce the tingling of the citadel. Particularly gifted to make decors more real than nature as Limbo and Mad Fate I had demonstrated before him, Soi Cheang again succeeded in creating the illusion of organic density. This slum makes us suffocate so much promiscuity prevents any intimacy, even embryonic.
Each corner is full of details and despite the measured use of synthetic images for the aerial planes, the scenes of the fighting, they take place in authentic settings. It was certainly necessary to redouble inventiveness to stage choreographies in such narrow spaces. The full verticality of the citadel is felt with electrical cables and fractures where to sneak in extremis to better jump from one cell to another. When Liu Chun-hin drives a motorcycle in the village corridors, we imagine how much the scene must have been a technical puzzle. Soi Cheang can boast of being one of the last artisans of Hong Kong cinema and the care given to every detail as well as to the waterfalls bound to perfectionism.
City of Darkness has a well-stocked casting, with Louis Koo (Paradox), Terrance Lau (Beyond the Dream) or the legend Sammo Hung, which has shot among other things in feature films with Jackie Chan. There is also John Chong, one of the largest producers of martial arts cinema. He made his weapons and forged a solid reputation during the Golden Age of Hong Kong's cinema in the beautiful time of Bruce Lee. He is also supported by Wilson Yip to whom we owe the saga Ip Man.
Kowloon Lumpur
In addition to this implacable casting and the concern for architectural realism, we must once again salute the talent of the film's teams to reproduce the daily life of Kowloon. From the barber's salon to the small buis-buis and food shops, one feels like one of the crowded streets of the citadel. The artistic direction is flicky and this credit certainly comes from the background work done by taking photographs, historical archives and testimonies of those who lived there before the demolition. If one too often reduces Soi Cheang to muscular battons, the goldsmith's work to bring life to the cities he wears on the screen makes the Hong Kong director one of the best of his generation.
Expect a lot of organized bands and each object becomes a weapon by destination. The actors confirmed the harshness of the shooting, which involved 15 to 18 hour work sessions and an exceptional physical condition. One of them would have even had fifteen stitches in his face following a shooting accident. The blows do not lack impact, the fighters cross the walls and do not hesitate to make surreal acrobatic jumps thanks to a small digital push well integrated into the image. The set is reinforced by a striking sound design and a very good OST.
More than Mad Fate and his almost divine relationship to the elements, City of Darkness completely assumes its burlesque bias with its invincible antagonist to evil laughter and mule of another age. The cosmology (or Wuxing in Chinese) occupies a significant place to explain the extraordinary abilities of this battery of unremovable broken arms. Fatality and destiny are omnipresent, as is manicheism. Like a western, heroes and their antagonists are each in their own way archetypes of the genre.
The vilest of them multiplied Trafalgar's blows and would almost pass the last boss of Tekken 8 for an abortion. Unlike Limbo and its black to black tone, City of Darkness opts for a situational comic even in certain passages of his very inspired choreography. This greyish sponsor account payment is a treat of every moment. We have to see Cyclone catch up with his cigarette in the middle of the flight after rumbling a seasoned fighter with one hand. Same when one discovers the agility of his old rival Mr. Big who rises up in the air by challenging Newton's laws. It's the permanent hyperbole applied methodically to every scene of a baton with a second degree always well dosed. In an effort to respect the original manhuas, Soi Cheang and his teams have based their work on storyboards in preprod to simulate a sensation of stripping.
Soi Cheang has fun playing with his audience and his own mythology, not hesitating to respond to the criticisms of his detractors who accuse him of esthetizing violence against women by showing inappropriate sadism. This is the answer given by Soi Cheang in an explicit and eminently regressive scene where a femicide writer gets lynched by large arms disguised behind child masks. At least it's clear.
« I like to create worlds where life is difficult. »
Apart from the fact that Art is not intended to be confused with morality, let us remember if it is necessary that the cinema of Soi Cheang is cruel and he knows it; is even indicated in the title City of Darkness. A trial that many artists have known in the past, starting with Frank Miller and his radical comics Sin City. The saga was shocking some when it was released in 1991, long before the author's racist and reactionary political stances made him crumble. In City of Darkness, some of the scoundrels ready to overturn the Citadelle are total garbage.
Yet the film also works in contrast to its ordinary heroes. Even at the Citadelle, whose reputation for a long time suggested that the Triads ruled there as tyrants, there is life and mutual help in the shadow of violence. By the children, symbol of innocence, but also among the protectors of Kowloon who still cultivate a sense of honor and sacrifice as its population ready to give to those who have nothing. It is on this permanent ridge line that Soi Cheang unfolds his story, between a well-known legend of the Blood Triads and a misguided humanity that hangs up at all costs to try to hang on to life.
Kowloon is a symbol. Like these crusade brothers, the powerless spectator knows that he attends the last moments of the city before it is demolished and swallowed by the big market. And that, the clairvoyant old godfathers of the underworld had long flaired; The shanty town will be depopulated block by block for the benefit of vile promoters: it is a sword of Damocles that weighs on all its inhabitants and their marginal way of life. We can also wonder who capital or cartels are the most violent in the end.
Soi Cheang is a bit of all these breakers at once. It embodies the resistance of an artist out of time able to slew against « the death of Hong Kong cinema ». His broken and crippled arms that fight until their last breath, it's a bit of a lifetime work of a director who has never ceased to bridge between the old and the younger generation by going against all the tendencies of a society javeled with American action productions.
Great movie! We hope it will mark the return of HK cinema! And bravo for this criticism which is one of the few to put so much forward the original comic.
Thanks for the support message, it's always a pleasure! I must say that I was really overturned by the NIFFF session. Such films should be made more known to an audience that is too anaesthetized to American prods.
I hope he'll be successful in the hall. Cinema made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts. And it feels so generous is crazy. Let's hope that one day I would have the opportunity to interview Master Soi Cheang...