Director: Johnnie To
Writers: Wai Ka Fai, Yau Nai Hoi, Ryker Chan, Yu Xi
Cinematography: Cheng Siu Keung, To Hung Mo
Editors: Allen Leung, David Richardson
Music: Xavier Jamaux
Notable Cast: Sun Honglei, Louis Koo, Ping Hao, Michelle Ye, Guo Tao, Jing Li, Lo Hoi Pang, Suet Lam, Tingting Gan
I am not a fan of foreign language films, in a general sense. I want to watch a movie, not read it. Sure, I love a good Godard film from the 60’s, and yeah there are a smattering of foreign language flicks I dig, but for the most part I assiduously avoid them. If I wanna read a flick, I’ll buy the book, you know what I mean?
So, when my buddy at the network recommended I watch Drug War, I was not exactly running out to catch it. I’d never heard of Johnnie To, never heard of any of the writers or actors. Had no clue what it was about save the fact it concerned cops and drug dealers. That’s it. Why would I watch this? Seems like a standard, cookie cutter Asian actioner with a very generic title.
My buddy said they do something very sophisticated that he’s never seen in any kind of cops and robbers type movie before. Obviously, he wouldn’t tell me what it was, said to just check it out.
Well, how could I not? It was almost a dare. But you know me, I’m always game. I mean, always game to at least check out the 1ST 5 Minutes. Being a foreign film, my trigger finger was even more twitchy than usual, this movie better deliver and fast!
1ST 5 MINUTES
Note: How lucky are you that YouTube offers this movie for free? No excuses, you must watch!
First image we see after some tastefully simple credits, is a two or three story warehouse looking building with sickly yellow smoke pouring out of the roof as a car races away from it, driving erratically. We cut to inside the car and see the great Louis Koo (though at this point I didn’t know he was great, in fact, I didn’t know who he was at all, he may as well be a bit player) who has odd abrasions on his face and is trying to stop himself from vomiting. A cell phone on the floor of the car rings, but goes unanswered as our driver has other concerns at the present moment.
He passes some surveillance cameras before crashing into a Chinese restaurant. He lays on the steering wheel, knocked out from the collision, as a white substance drips from his unconscious mouth. The cell phone on the floor continues to ring. We cut to the title card, where the words are formed by cocaine or some other white powder, and the fantastic score kicks in for the first time. This is promising.
We get some more credits as we cut to a broken down looking green cube truck racing down the highway. The occupants inside smoking drugs from some homemade pipe. A red car is following them. Inside the red car are two men, and from the looks of the interior, they’ve been on a very long road trip, as trash is strewn all over the dashboard.
Both vehicles are forced to stop at a toll station lined with security and surveillance cameras. As the green truck pays, the toll worker really eyeballs them, same with the guys in the red car, who take a call just as they pull up, relaying to someone on the other end where they are on the road. The toll worker notices all the food containers, as well as a nearly full bottle of urine. The call cuts out as their cell battery dies.
The green truck goes through the toll, followed by the red car. The toll worker spies their license plate as they depart.
Cut to the interior of a bus packed with riders. Here we get our first look at Sun Honglei as he eats some oranges. The bus he’s on suddenly develops an overheated engine, and starts pouring smoke as they approach the same toll station as our previous two vehicles. The other people on the bus start to panic, but we have no idea why. The bus driver asks if they could get some water for the radiator, and the toll worker, the same woman from before, radios in the issue, as she eyeballs the guy sitting next to Sun Honglei because of his obvious agitation.
And that does it for the 1ST 5 Minutes of Drug War. I don’t know about you, but I am thoroughly confused at this point, have no clue what is going on in what seems like 3 different storylines. But you know what? I’m intrigued. I’m curious to see what came of Louis Koo in the car crash, curious to know what is going on with that green truck, and curious about this bus. How the hell does all this tie together?
I like the boldness of starting a film like this, where we don’t simply get one story starting in media res, but three fucking stories starting in media res, all within the 1ST 5 Minutes! For my money, the filmmakers have done their job in keeping me glued to the screen. I need to see how this plays out.
The rest of the flick
Turns out the man on the bus, Sun Honglei, is actually an undercover cop on a sting, busting some heroin smugglers he was traveling with on the bus. I love that he’s wearing a cowboy hat, a big leather jacket, and cowboy boots. There’s just something about Asians obsessed with American Western culture that sends me. The drug smugglers try to run, and Sun Honglei gives chase to the main guy he was conversing with earlier. The guy thinks both of them are running from the cops, but once Sun Honglei takes him down (with a dope flying scissor kick move), he realizes he was set up.
One thing you need to know about this film is it does not hold your hand, even a little bit. It hits the ground running and dares you to keep up. I must admit, on my first viewing, I was confused through a lot of this movie. Not because it is poorly made or written, but because of how bold the storytelling is. It helps that the cast is all unknowns, at least to me, so you as the audience member really don’t know who the good guy is, who the bad guy is, nothing. You’re able to just sit back and let the film envelope you, without any preconceptions or biases. This is how films should be seen, in a near total vacuum.
What I love about the opening scenes featuring Sun Honglei as Captain Zhang is how utterly serious he is about his work, and the lengths he’ll go to bust these drug dealers. Take his opening mission that we see the very end of when the movie opens. He was part of a group that swallowed a lot of little plastic baggies filled with heroin in order to transport the drugs where they needed to go.
As part of his undercover duties, he himself ALSO swallowed tens of little heroin baggies, and see the pain on his face as he is forced to shit out all the drugs he swallowed (I love how, moments later, he calmly washes the fecal matter from the bags he shit out). It is an extremely dangerous thing to be a drug mule. All it takes is one bag to burst inside you and you’re done for. Captain Zhang is one tough motherfucker, who will do anything to take down these criminals. This is an important character trait that will come into play again very soon.
Once they have Louis Koo’s Timmy Choi in custody, they start bracing him for info. The cops hold all the cards as Timmy is looking at a death sentence for his drug crimes. There’s a great interrogation scene where Captain Zhang lays it all out for us. Timmy, his wife, and her two brothers, were running a meth factory that had a fatal accident, of which Timmy is the sole survivor.
Despite this, Timmy shows no emotion. At least on the surface, he seems cool as a cucumber, and keeps his trap shut, until suddenly he decides to cooperate. Why is unclear, and despite him giving them info that they’re instantly able to corroborate, Captain Zhang remains skeptical. Choi tells them the green truck we saw in the beginning is his, it contains materials to make meth, and that it is heading for one of his other labs. In addition, he is to make an introduction that very evening between a shipping magnate, Brother HaHa, and an associate of one of the biggest drug suppliers around, Bill Li, or Uncle Bill, as he is known. Zhang asks if they have ever met before, and Choi tells them they have not. Zhang gets an idea.
And here is where we come to the extremely well done and original sequence that had my buddy all a giddy. Because Haha and Chang, Uncle Bill’s associate, have never met, Zhang decides he is going to play BOTH sides of the meeting, back to back. That is, in the first go around, Zhang will pretend to be the associate of Uncle Bill when he meets the real Haha, and then once that meeting is done, Zhang will pretend to be HaHa for his meeting with the real Uncle Bill associate.
But when you’re watching the film the first time, it is not at all clear what the hell they’re up to, but once you figure it out, you’re absolutely bowled over. No idea who of the four writers came up with this conceit, but it is sheer fucking genius. On the page. The execution of this originality will be the key to its success. And Johnnie To is not only up for the challenge, he hits it out of the park. Ably assisted by his fantastic cast. And it is a fantastic cast. Picking up off a thread introduced in earlier posts, the casting of the villains/henchmen is key to the success or failure of action films.
None moreso than Ping Hao as Haha. This guy is electric! What a screen presence, you can’t take your eyes off of him. A ruthless criminal, he affects a wonderful laugh both as weapon and shield, depending on the circumstances. That’s why my very Favorite Line in this film is his oft repeated, “Ha ha ha ha ha ha.” It’s simply delicious. The way he starts and stops the laughing is insane it’s so unnatural and practiced. It’s SO good. Seriously one of the finest characters ever created for a film.
He’s both terrifying and charming, intimidating and disarming. Hao gives a performance for the ages here. A great actor chewing into a great role. And in a 1ST 5 Minutes, uh… first, all my favorites in the film come from the same scene. The HaHa/Chang meetings are my Favorite Scene in the film (though technically a sequence), while containing both my Favorite Line and Favorite Shot.
Once Zhang agrees to be HaHa’s supplier, him and Timmy abscond to another room in the hotel and Zhang starts changing his clothes. At this point, you’re not really sure what they’re doing, but then Zhang lets out a HaHa style laugh, and repeats one of the lines the real HaHa said to him, and you’re like, WHAT? HaHa is such a different character than Zhang, but Sun Honglei pulls it off effortlessly. He’s so good as the stoic Zhang that when he lets loose as HaHa it’s a real revelation. And this sequence, much as my buddy promised, elevates this genre film from the pretty good to the seriously great category. Hard to express just how mindblowing this sequence is, you really need to just watch it.
My Favorite Shot occurs when Zhang (acting as HaHa), Timmy Choi and the real associate of Uncle Bill enter the elevator in the hotel just as the real HaHa exits from the other elevator, just barely missing each other. The look on Captain Zhang’s face as the elevator doors close is great, with a big shit eating smile on his face. The actor is as keyed in as the character he’s playing. Goddamn I love that shot of him smiling. No idea who Sun Honglei is, or what other films he’s done, but this dude is an actor’s actor.
As is Louis Koo as Timmy Choi. He has to be one of the best looking actors I have ever laid my eyes on. He is seriously handsome. And he plays such a wonderfully complex character, whose motivations remain unclear throughout the film, as he is extremely believable when he is helping the cops, very genuine, with almost zero deception detected, not that Zhang will let even the slightest thing slide.
Check the scene after Zhang nearly overdoses on Uncle Bill’s cocaine, saved in large part by the quick thinking of Timmy telling the cops how to save him. You’d think Zhang would at least give some sort of acknowledgement or thanks for the lifesaving tips. Instead, he walks up to Timmy, and asks him, very matter of factly, what the double tap on Uncle Bill’s associate’s arm meant. Even when coked out of his mind and near death, Zhang had the presence of mind to still be in cop mode, noticing the slightest behaviors that may be a tip off that Timmy is playing them. We’ve now seen Zhang risk his life with drugs twice in aid of taking down these networks.
There’s no one liners, no angry boss cop yelling at everyone, no personal life getting in the way of the job, no wives, no kids, no nothing. The cops in this film are extremely well trained and disciplined, and treat their work with the life or death seriousness it represents. It’s a welcome respite from the usual goofy Hollywood genre conventions.
The rest of the film is quite good, maybe not reaching the same heights as the HaHa sequence, but still quite entertaining. A few of the highlights are:
The Mute Brothers! I love these guys. Timmy Choi shows up to one of his warehouses, which is run by two deaf brothers. In the English translation, they’re known as the Mute Brothers, but in the original Chinese, I’ve read they’re actually called The Dumb Brothers, one is referred to as Senior Dumb, the other, Junior Dumb. Obviously, China doesn’t have the same language policing as here in the western world, so they’re still using the term “dumb” to refer to deaf people.
Regardless of this, these guys are probably the two toughest motherfuckers in the whole movie, which is no easy feat when sharing the screen with Captain Zhang and Timmy. First of all, they have a slight hip-hoppy vibe to them, as both wear baggy clothes and their baseball hats to the side. They’re also absolutely ruthless once the situation calls for a shootout. There’s a nice scene between them and Timmy when he reveals his wife and her brothers were killed in the accident at his factory. It’s the first time we see Timmy really process this loss, and Louis Koo nails it.
Uncle Bill! Turns out the ruthless drug dealer HaHa thought he was going into business with, “Uncle” Bill Li, is actually SEVEN different Chinese crime families, that use an actor as their frontman, so as not to reveal their identities. The idea of this is more interesting than the reality of it, as most of these characters are pretty interchangeable, except for two of them, Lam Suet as Fatso and Lo Hoi Pang as Birdie. Those guys are great, and not at all what you’d expect from a crime lord, especially Birdie, who presents as a kindly old man.
They all have a wonderful scene together at HaHa’s shipping port, where Zhang is continuing his undercover impersonation of HaHa. Feel like this scene was a bitch and a half to shoot, between the number of principal cast involved, and all the various ships at the port having to leave at different intervals. Really good shit.
The end shootout! Nothing really groundbreaking here, just a very well shot and choreographed end action scene, where Timmy finally turns on the cops for good, and reveals to the seven crime lords that “HaHa” and his guys are really all cops, and that they’ll need to take them out. In a very werid twist, instead of taking them where he said he would, he takes them and the cops to an elementary school as it is letting out for the day. What I love about this is how vicious it is of Timmy to do this, figuring it would be harder for the cops to get them if a bunch of little kids were in the way.
Up to this point, you feel Timmy is kind of a good guy in a sense, he realizes he has no way out and decides to maybe do one good thing before going to jail for the rest of his life by assisting the detectives. But no, not only does he turn on the cops, whereby sealing his fate one way or the other, he turns on all the Uncle Bill families as well, and not only that, even coldly executes The Mute Brothers! Not sure I understand why all these double crosses, but it makes for delicious fun, and underlines the murderous desperation of Timmy to stay alive and free no matter what.
There’s a wonderful little moment in the middle of the carnage, where one of the Uncle Bill crime bosses, a woman, loses her shoe as she is shot while running for cover. In her delirium as the blood runs out of her body, and death is just moments away, she grabs her shoe and tries in vain to put it back on. Excellent little detail, like the henchman in Die Hard grabbing the chocolate bar. It’s little shit like this that always separates the mediocre cop films from the great ones; little character details, great casting of the henchmen, utilizing genre tropes to subvert genre tropes.
All this puts Drug War in the upper echelons of cop movies.
Everyone dies at the end of this shootout, including Captain Zhang, who is shot to death by Timmy, but not before handcuffing himself to Timmy’s ankle, preventing him from escaping. Timmy is the only one who lives, all the other cops and drug dealers we’ve been following are dead. But we still have one more scene, and if not for the brilliance of the HaHa sequence, this final scene would have been my Favorite.
Timmy Choi is being prepared for death by lethal injection. As he is being strapped down to the metal table, he desperately pleads for his life by revealing everything he knows about every single drug dealer he has ever met or even heard of. It’s AMAZING. I absolutely LOVE shit like this:
“Law Wah sells marijuana in Chongshan. One-eyed Ming runs Special K in Fugang. He has a Filipino partner who helps him deal with Southeast Asia. Old Xu in Chengzhou has an orchard which actually grows ephedra trees. He’s the speed supplier for the Northwest. I’ve heard there’s a chemistry professor in Luzhou developing an ultra-strong LSD. This is lethal, he must be stopped quickly. I can help get the information. There’s Wei Dong. The King of Heroin. He’s hiding out in Myanmar. I know there’s a bank laundering money for him in Yunbian. His name is Chen… No, it’s Cheng… No, no, no. Wait, wait. I can supply you with more information. Wait! I’ve got more… more information.”
His breath finally gives out as the liquids are pumped into him. End credits roll. What an ending.
His whole death speech really expands the mythos of the world they created, and encapsulates the whole problem with the drug war. Sure, Zhang took out this gigantic drug smuggling and manufacturing ring, took down the elusive Uncle Bill, but what did he really accomplish? Based on what Timmy lays out for the executioners, Zhang barely made a dent in the drug trade.
Like here in the states, no matter how many high-profile drug busts are made, if you’re a drug user, is there ever a time when you can’t score? I’ve known lots of drug users over the years, and not once did any of them have a problem buying their drug of choice. Yeah, maybe their dealer isn’t answering their phone, ok, they just call someone else. Eventually, the drugs are secured.
The drug war is a fucking racket, and Timmy Choi’s desperate pleas in this final scene only highlight the absurdity and futility of fighting this war.
A war no one wins.
The One Sheet
This film had quite a few one sheets designed for it, and I’m pretty fond of most of them. And it all starts with this great one sheet, that was used for at least the U.S. market (hard to find info on which posters were used where, or I’m just too lazy to dig….). Nice, simple graphic design, featuring the very handsome Louis Koo (with his meth burns) in profile, purple smoke drifting out of his mouth, and a nice simple tag line. I also dig the font they used for the title.
These character posters for the Asian market are great, especially the Fatso and Birdie ones. I always dig a good set of character posters. One of my favorite of all time is the Sean Connery one for The Avengers flick. These aren’t quite that good, but still solid.
This movie had a very extensive marketing campaign, with tons of different one sheets. Here is but a sampling of the best ones:
And that does it for Drug War, aka, Du Zhan, a sophisticated, nifty little crime thriller that wastes no time with extraneous bullshit while delivering its quite satisfying payload. It’s funny that in a movie touted as Johnnie To’s first film shot entirely on mainland China, all the characters, including the drug dealers, drive Buicks. Such an odd thing.
Really just adds to the film’s charm, seeing them lumbering around China in goddamn Buick Regals. There’s just too much to like in this movie. And a lot of that is evident in the 1ST 5 Minutes.
See you in 兩…