Sons of the Neon Night

I finally got to watch Sons of the Neon Night in the cinema, after waiting eight years, and it was absolutely worth it.

Juno Mak has created a world that is unmistakably his own: stunning visuals that look like a photography album, an alternate version of Hong Kong that feels both familiar and surreal, and carefully designed props and set pieces. Beautiful, and instantly recognizable as Juno's style.

Some critics say the narrative is fragmented. But if you speak Cantonese, you can definitely follow the story. Of course, it's not like a TV drama where every thought is spelled out with voiceover. With so many characters, it's inevitable that not all of them are deeply developed-but that doesn't ruin the experience. I watched it with a foreign friend who doesn't speak Cantonese, and he felt the storytelling was unclear, but for me it worked.

Takeshi Kaneshiro looks incredibly handsome on screen. Honestly, I felt a little jealous of Gao Yuanyuan for being able to see him up close!

Most importantly, I feel proud that someone invested so much to make a Hong Kong film this fresh and ambitious. That kind of courage is rare. It's a movie that deserves to be supported on the big screen.

It'll throw you right in a world of many stories without clear focus and you'll wonder if anyone is sane including yourself. There is no hero (so no arc), there are quite many people's with troma.

It's its own thing, mostly violence and a headache.

Imagine an action movie with 6 heroes with disconnected stories that intertwine, without introduction so you probably would need to watch it multiple times and to truly understand them all. You'll root for no one, and probably half guess half of the the motives of each action.

As just an ordinary viewer, I'm not a filmmaker, so I'm not qualified to judge the technical "good" or "bad" of this movie. I simply feel that a film is, at its core, the director's story, even if it doesn't get recognized by the masses. I'm not a fan of any specific director or film, but I know that filmmaking is an incredibly complex undertaking.

This film kept everyone waiting for eight long years. I can only guess that the "soul" of the movie (the director) wanted to show the audience the best version possible and did a lot to make that happen. Unfortunately, it feels like that original persistence was crushed under stacks of silent, emotionless, flat paper, leaving only silence in its wake.

While I don't personally agree with how the director handled his personal issues, this review is just my personal opinion on the film itself.

I was thinking about the cop/crime genre, and here's a hypothetical storyline: What if a cop film was driven by three "soul" protagonists? They might never have appeared in the film's "society" from start to finish, but they were secretly planning and directing the entire incident from behind the scenes, causing the whole city to fall into chaos. And in the end, it's an unknown, but very righteous, "hard-boiled" character who, all alone, manages to defeat these three masterminds. I think that would be a pretty good storyline, but that's just a hypothetical for a movie that doesn't exist. Of course, even if this hypothetical plot worked, it would still need a lot of firefights. After all, it's a cop movie, and it needs to be an intelligent and action-packed film that the public can accept.

Finally, I want to give this movie a full 5 stars because it deserves it. I believe it's only a matter of time before the next film is even better.

(P. S. There are absolutely no elements of stylistic plagiarism in this movie.)

The movie is visually stunning and it was fascinating to see a dystopian version of Hong Kong but that is all the movie has going for it. This is by far one of the worst movies that I have seen and compelled me to come here and leave a review. I came into this hoping to like it as I've been a long time fan of Louis Koo and recently enjoyed Tony Ka Fai Leung in The Shadow's Edge so I had hopes for this movie and figured at the very least I would enjoy it as a mindless watch. Unfortunately even with good actors, that wasn't enough to save this mess. I can't help but feel like it is trying to do too much to provocative, edgey or innovative yet failed on all those fronts. It was just a mess that was underpinned by poor writing. Throughout the movie, I found myself iften thinking 'huh?'. Save yourself the trouble and just avoid this movie. I would gice this half a star if I could. Not a zero though cos at least the set looks nice, the colour grading is great and at least has good actors (though they were not given the chance to shine).

From Rigor Mortis writer-director Juno Mak, Sons of the Neon Night is a lavish, brooding arthouse crime drama with an impressive star-studded ensemble and a whopping budget that buckles under the weight of its huge overreaching ambition.

Set in an alternate, crime-ridden, snowy Hong Kong, a hospital bombing causes the death of Park Li, the chairman of QIN, a pharmaceutical conglomerate that acts as a front for a major drug ring. Moreton Li, the youngest son, succeeds the chairman position and aims to turn QIN into a clean, legitimate business.

Armed with seemingly unlimited resources and time, Juno Mak has admirable ambition, aiming to deliver something unique and different from commercial filmfare, and to his credit, maintains his singular artistic voice.

However, the ponderous multi-threaded narrative is so focused with breaking storytelling rules that it has no chance of finishing satisfyingly within its 132 minute runtime, reportedly cut down from a six-hour director's cut.

The visuals are striking. Every frame could be a matted black-and-white photograph hung in a modern designer gallery. Takeshi Kaneshiro waking up smoking in his bed in the Hong Kong Cross Harbour Tunnel in the opening set my brain on fire, "Is he the king of the underworld?"

It is bold to create a perpetually snowing Hong Kong and let the Hong Kong movie audience deal with that visual. I've read so many online posts commenting, "There's no snow in Hong Kong" or "Causeway Bay doesn't look like that". I imagine Juno Mak smirking every time that happens going, "Tsk tsk".

It was fascinating entering this metaphorical crime-laden Hong Kong and relating to Juno Mak's unique, oddball and glum worldview. It felt like a more abstract version of the Sin City movies and I enjoyed deciphering what all the visual motifs meant. However, this empty vagueness could be frustrating for many.

My key criticism with the visuals, as gorgeous and well-composed as they are, is the cinematography does not visualize the narrative and its themes.

Moreton's proposal to sell pharmaceutical drugs over illegal drugs is a thematically rich idea, but never visualized. How about a montage juxtaposing a tired office worker popping painkillers from his medicine cabinet to a junkie shooting up in the alleyway?

One of the plots features Sean Lau's narcotics officer trying to save his sick daughter, but the camera never fully shows her face. How can the audience root for a character they can't see?

The movie habitually floats interesting ideas and plot threads, watches it lift off, but then cuts the kite string and goes, "You know where that'll go, right?".

All the story exposition, the who, what, where, when, why, and how, is entirely delivered through dialogue, a similar issue to Christopher Nolan's Tenet. It even sinfully opens with lengthy blink-and-you'll-miss title cards setting up the story.

International audiences will struggle with the subtitles and keeping track of which character is being mentioned in the dialogue.

The film's open-ended approach is a double-edged sword. At times, the negative space is well-placed and the audience is invited to brood along with its characters on what will happen next. But other times, lot of the story seems forcibly left open as there isn't enough runtime for proper payoff.

It all ends on a unsatisfying note...

The problem in the end, is still script.

In a behind-the-scenes interview, Takeshi Kaneshiro, told Juno Mak after reading the script, "You'll never finish telling the whole story. Every character is a lead part. This should be a series."

Sons of the Neon Night is a similar case to Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, a self-financed project where the director has free reign, but nothing's reigning him in.

There are rumors of Netflix releasing a longer version as a mini-series. I'd be interested in seeing a complete director's cut.

Will adding more runtime solve the issue? I'm not sure but I'd be happy to find out.

There's a lot of things to like in Sons of the Neon Night and I am not quite ready to dismiss it all yet.