Saat chut sai ying poon

Terry Tong’s first autonomous feature-length project is part of the less exalted, but actually dominant lineage of the Hong Kong New Wave, the core of which comprises thematically and stylistically iconoclastic contributions to traditional genres, as well as personal and social dramas. The main asset of the young generation of filmmakers, who came from the television environment and came of age studying film abroad, consisted in the professionalisation and stylistic renaissance of their craft on the one hand and, on the other hand, the transition from studio interiors to the real settings of the British colony and presenting them together with everyday motifs and themes. In the first half of the 1980s, most of the filmmakers had been assimilated into the mainstream, but they transformed it with their style and perspective. Together with a number of other New Wave genre contributions including, for example, films produced by Dennis Yu, Coolie Killer foreshadowed and co-established the above-described trend of genre films in New Wave garb. From today’s perspective, the conventional story of a group of hired killers whose rivals are breathing down their necks becomes the perfect space for formalistic exhibition due to its banality, or rather its easy understandability as a genre movie and its minimal dialogue. Everything that is now praised in the technically progressive action movies of the new millennium was put to use in Coolie Killer. The action is not merely an attraction for its own sake, but serves for the characters’ development and advances the narrative. Each sequence takes place in a specific photogenic location whose layout and strengths are fully exploited. All of the film’s locations are real and the lens of the New Wave court cinematographer David Chung simultaneously highlights their authenticity and seeks out the most impressive compositions within them. In addition to its stylistic merits, Coolie Killer is also a key genealogical entry for classics that came later. The film’s narrative about a tragically cursed killer and the mutual professional respect between him and a police investigator, as well as the stylistically romanticised depiction of the world of crime and the overarching cool pathos, were adopted by John Woo for his milestone The Killer at the end of the decade. (08.01.2023)