All About Ah-Long

Sometimes, when you see a movie, you think it's fantastic. Sometimes, you think it's terrible. Other times, you think it's quite good, but is in dire need of a remake. In the third category is All About Ah-Long, which is in essence a very good movie, but has a couple of things wrong with it that could be easily fixed.

The story is, for the most part, not one of them. Chow Yun Fat is the titular character, a truck driver and failed motorcycle racer who is raising his slightly obnoxious son Porky (Kwan Yuen Wang) on his own. One day, Porky catches the eye of Sylvia (Sylvia Chang) who happens to be the casting director for a series of advertisements. Oh, and she's also Ah-Long's ex and the mother of Porky, as she finds out much to her surprise.

It's an interesting take on the bond between parents, as Porky begins to bond with his new found mother and unknowingly causes a bit of jealousy in the father he's known and cared about for the last ten years. The young actor in the role is pretty good at being an admittedly obnoxious little brat who remains quite likable. The film as a whole is quite emotionally complex, with characters having to deal with their resentment towards one another competing with their love of this little brat. It's the kind of thing that works partially because it's a universal concern, since everyone has parents, most have lovers and many have kids. The relationships here are strong, and as they make up the core of the movie, it could easily be remade to be even better.

So why do I want it remade? Well, first, it's the 80s, so the soundtrack's bad, and the film stock is poor. That's admittedly nitpicking, there's precisely one reason I want this film remade, and that's the ending. See, there's a scene immediately before the final scene that involves a plane taking off that has a nice bit of ambiguity, is slightly sad, and is the most appropriate way for the film to end up. Then, there's a tacked on motorcycle race, which just screws with the characters you've grown to like over the past hour and a half, makes stupid plays at big emotions, manufactures a rivalry seemingly out of thin air and generally makes the movie retroactively worse. The scene before was lightly melancholic, this tries way too hard to be sad and becomes almost comical in the process. The sheer amount of punishment Ah-Long receives is obnoxious, everyone gets a big emotional moment that's overdone, and it also happens to make the race look like the worst run motorcycle race in the history of racing. I'd like to forget it ever happened.

With a remake, I can! Get to it someone, make a film of Ah-Long but change that stupid ending and give the world a solid film. It's a mostly good movie, I'm sure that with the right script and the stupid motorcycle race excised forever, we can have one of the better examples of a film about the bonds of family, the way people change over the years, the conflict that happens when parents split, and so on. 90% of this film is genuinely fantastic. 10% is godawful. One little remake could change those percentages completely.

Election

One of the troubles with democracy is that the losing side never seems to take it well. Take the anger directed towards the Obama administration in the US, or its predecessor, the anger directed at the Bush administration. In fact, right now, the entirety of Canadian politics is structured around the bitterness of the losing side. If Election is to be believed, even the triads (they're kinda like the mafia I guess, for a parallel more familiar to North American audiences) in Hong Kong have to deal with election problems, as the loser just doesn't want to admit they're not in power. It's like regular politics, except with machetes.

Election starts as just being about an election, between two potential chairmen of a triad. One is Lok, as portrayed by Simon Lam. His platform is based on loyalty, brotherhood, and the expansion of property. The other is Big D, by Tony Leung Ka Fai, easily the second best Tony Leung. His platform is based on a solid foundation of giving everyone lots of money. There's also a symbolic baton, which is very important in a very traditional outfit like the triad. Big D loses, so he decides to hijack the baton and start a war, leading to two separate yet equally important storylines. One is the journey of the baton, as the two opposing sides in the battle attempt to gain control and give it to the person they like best. The other is the older people in the triad trying to convince Big D to stop being so foolish and prevent the triad from being destroyed. Caught in the middle are the police, who, more than anything, just want to make sure there's not too much trouble on the streets.

The fantastic thing about the story is that director Johnnie To has created genuine tension in this story. First, there's a side to root for, since Lok is a bit less of a jerk than Big D, and he won fairly. This makes you care about what happens to the baton, and whether or not the triad can survive. Yes, it's still a criminal organization, but considering the alternative Lok is someone you want running it. Second, as Lok and Big D play their respective influences and change the minds of other triad bosses, there's a sense of complete unpredictability. Someone's side can change in the space of a phone call. Add Big D being a complete loose cannon, and you honestly don't know what's going to happen, or whether or not peace or chaos will reign. From beginning to end, it's a complete unknown what's going to happen next.

The story is tense, but it's helped along by an insistent guitar score. In essence, you know something is soon happening, even in what might appear to be a relatively banal sequence. Since anything can happen, it keeps you on your toes, and since there's payoff early and often, it never feels like the movie is lying to you. Car chases aren't high speed, and there's really only one extremely elaborate fight scene, but there's always a sense of violence lurking under the surface, a necessary component to keep the viewer curious.

The closest the film has to a weak point is the ending, which flops around not knowing when to call it a finish. It's certainly not a bad ending, and a succession of twists are all worthwhile, but it gives a sense of someone who didn't quite know how he was going to piece together the ideas he needed to express. Even the editing and cinematography get a bit haphazard at this point, but it doesn't make it bad by any means. Besides which, the final twists are worth whatever inconsistency there is.

The best thing is that it takes the mud slinging and back stabbing of normal politics and makes it literal, and that's fantastic to watch. As a demonstration of the problems of democracy, it's pretty spot on. That's not to say that democracy is a bad thing by any means, but that every time your party loses, you should just let it go and start preparing for the next election.