Review Fire of Conscience

Cinema of Hong Kong has changed a lot over the past two decades. One thing remains unchanged is the genre Hong Kong moviegoers would never ever getting tired of, the crime-gangster or cop drama. This genre is pioneered by two great street-crime movies in 1980s i.e. John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow, and Wong Kar Wai’s As Tears Go By. The style of the latter is actually heavily adapted from Martin Scorsese’s Mean Street (1974) which depicted New York’s street crime gangster in a realistic fashion. At that time, gangster movies were still, by many, considered taboo. Nowadays, there are literally hundreds of them produced annually and unfortunately most of them are junks. This movie is not an exception, albeit it has some interesting noteworthy points.

Man (Leon Lai), and Kee (Richie Jen) are two cops from different units. They both coincide one another when the cases they handle are related. Man, an almost degenerate cop still mourned his wife’s death, cares one thing and one thing only: beat the hell out of bad guys’ asses. Kee, on the other hand is much less of an idealistic cop, who is actually abusing his authority to get money to pay off his debt even it conflicts his own responsibilities. The two initially were in a brief partnership until Man found out the rat behind the escape of a bomber criminal. And the two collide face to face.

I remember the last time, a very good Hong Kong thriller of this genre was out almost a decade ago in 2002, Infernal Affairs played very satisfyingly by Andy Lau and Tony Leung and was directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak.  It even caught Hollywood’s eyes and manifested with a remake The Departed in 2006 by Martin Scorsese who is literally the king of this kind of films. If only Hong Kong can maintain a crime thriller like this, I would be happy to sneak out to theatre every time Hong Kong releases this kind of film. Of course in reality, movie business is just.. well .. like any other business. The producers care about profit more than any artistic motivation. Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to that. As a matter of fact, the fact that movies of this genre are consistently produced every year means there are a lot of built-in audiences anticipating them. But they are way too many produced arbitrarily without any notion of creative craftsmanship. And instead of relying on clever, intriguing and apt story telling, this movie relies heavily on mindless noisy actions and some bloody scenes too. This is never good. The performances of the actors don’t really help much. One plus point is that the cinematography of the picture was really good !, but the editing was like a work of an amateur.

 “Fire of Conscience” a Media Asia releases was not Rated, but contain bloody and brutal violence, strong language. Two stars out of Four  (C)

-Mulyadi Tjoa, MIS officer @ P.T. Freeport Indonesia-

Review The Ghost Writer

What makes a good thriller ? A good thriller commences from an intriguing start and maintain audiences’ embraces with a consistently engrossing plot But then it starts to build the suspense until the moment of revelation is unfolded. The Ghost Writer does exactly that. If you haven’t read the novel, you might keep guessing what it is all about. But the problem with this movie is that even after the end credit roll, you will still keep guessing as you are never sure what was that about anyway and who the bad guy was.

The movie starts with an introduction to our main character which is the title role played vaguely coherent by Ewan McGregor. He is a single british auteur with style that can engineer even a lousy life story of renowned people to become intriguing memoir.  His masterpieces caught the eye of Ruth Lang (played by Olivia Williams), the wife of ex British prime minister, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) to continue to write the prime minister’s memoir in a month, equipped with the uncompleted manuscript left by the writer’s predecessor who committed suicide before the memoir get done.  Then we have this meeting with the prime minister (who doesn’t seem to possess adequate aptitude in political career) for the ghostwriter to interview him and turn all the answer into prose for the memoir. We are also learned that the prime minister has unsettled political conflict due to his involvement in a war crime. But then, something else strike our hero, he began to suspect nothing is what is seemed and since he found a secret document he realized that his predecessor might actually be killed, and start to ask himself the mystery surrounding the big man.

A Ghostwriter is an author who specializes in writing any form of literature products without addressing the credit for him/herself. Famous people (or even writer) wanting to write a book or novel (or even a screenplay), due to their strict activity and their apt limitation for the technicality of writing, will hire a ghostwriter to do the job for them. For bulk sum of money for a job well done, the ghostwriter will not get the credit for the book. The same happens in this movie where the name of our main ghostwriter remained unmentioned throughout the film. I was not too gung ho about all the cast in this picture, but they have proven to be just right (not over the top) especially Ewan McGregor whom I think play it to the heart and you can actually believe that this guy really had what he had in the picture.

The film was directed by Roman Polanski, a director who knows how to make a thriller movie as can be witnessed thru his past body of works such as Chinatown (1974) and The Pianist (2002) where he won academy award for best achievement in directing. Now, Polanski again show off his uncanny ability to make a wonderful thrilling picture, which, without much action in it can build and maintain the suspense level from start to finish and make audience embrace it. But like I mentioned earlier, it was not so satisfactory because some questions never quite answered, or maybe it is the intention of the director to an open interpretation. I admired his craftsmanship making this film while he is at a hard situation concerning the accused felony he conducted 3 decades ago, and with the thrilling political issue surrounding this movie (which  I love so much), he stands out to become one of those filmmakers you just can’t ignore. I also admired his decision to choose Ewan to become the leading actor where the actor was not traditionally Hollywood’s leading actor much in the same way as Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks. This might not be quite a satisfying thriller, but yes it is an enticing one.

"The Ghost Writer" a Summit Entertainment releases, is rated PG-13 for language, brief nudity/sexuality and a drug reference. Running time: 120 minutes. Three and a Quarter Stars out of Four (B+). 

-Mulyadi Tjoa, MIS officer @ P.T. Freeport Indonesia-