Unlikeable
Summary
PTU starts well but crashes and burns about half an hour in and does itself no favours with its slow pace and unlikeable characters.
Plot: An elite police squad search the streets for a cop’s missing gun while a gangland war brews.
Review: I heard many good things about PTU, and generally like the Dragon Dynasty movies I’ve seen, so I gave this one a shot. Plus, I enjoyed Simon Yam in SPL, so I looked forward to seeing him bring intensity to the lead role.
Was it worth it? In short, no. I still enjoyed Simon Yam, and I liked the film’s score. I thought there were some cool shots, and the first half-hour wasn’t too bad. Plus, there was a hilarious bit in the restaurant at the film’s beginning that turned shocking, so half an hour in, I was hopeful this would be another great Hong Kong action thriller.
Well, that’s where the fun ends. As soon as Fatty loses his gun and the Police Tactical Unit has to find it, the movie turns to garbage. It’s slow, it’s dull, and the characters are incredibly unlikeable. Let’s break it down.
The story was all over the place. It was a bunch of scenes stitched together that were meant to show how there’s no trust amongst the cops and definitely dislike between the cops and crooks. The problem was, I didn’t care. I figured cops could be brutal, even against their own, so I struggled to understand the plot. It was just a series of sequences where the cops were brutal for no reason, and it was all supposed to be profound. It wasn’t, though. It was just incredibly dull and felt aimless.
Speaking of bland, other than the end gunfight, this movie has no action. None. The PTU just walk around, trying to find a gun. Snore. Fatty runs around, looking for his gun. Double snore. Maggie Shiu wanders around, looking confused. You know who else was confused? Me. Confused about what was happening and why I should care. The movie never clarified this for me. It seemed to be a dark, gritty film without purpose other than to be dark and gritty.
The characters…yeah, the characters. The PTU seems like a bunch of assholes. One member kicks a guy almost to death. Why? Because. Simon Lam forces a gang member to rub his neck tattoo until it bleeds while slapping him. Why? Because…he doesn’t like the neck tattoo? It was so stupid. Maggie Chiu’s men brutalize an undercover agent. Why? The script said so. These were the supposed good guys! The hell. Fatty, at least, is obnoxious and buffoonish from the start, so you can almost forgive him.
Yeah, I heard this movie was a much-decorated action thriller, and I don’t know why. It was just very, very dull, and uninteresting – at 88 minutes runtime, there’s no defence for that. There’s no reason not to have more action. There’s no justification to make the cops assholes without reason, especially when you have so many scummy gang members in the flick. This was not a fun watch…maybe that was the point, but it is what it is. I won’t watch any of the sequels, and I’ll think twice before watching another police action thriller HK flick just because it was showered with award nominations