SYNOPSIS:
People
in Walled City are involved in underground activities, mainly
prostitution, gambling, and drugs. The only rule in the city
is not to get involved in others' business, a place with "nobody's
business". However, two men barged into that restricted
zone- a car crashed into Walled City, and the driver died on
the spot. Two men, who are handcuffed together, crawl out of
the car soaked in blood and collapse, while a mysterious person
witnesses the whole incident.
MOVIE REVIEW:
Chances are that if you are familiar with the name;
Herman Yau, you are probably aware of his body of works that
make him famous (or in his case, infamous) for. His cult classic
“The Untold Story” (aka that famous human flesh
bun movie) and “Ebola Syndrome” (aka that mutating
virus that infected Hong Kong) had left a memorable dent in
the Hong Kong film industry’s long history of movie
with it’s exploitive / gruesome / seedy signature that
created a new Category 3 genre for other film makers to reproduce
(or copy).
With Chaos,
it seems that the Director Herman Yau was trying to reclaim
his past glories by making this film that explores the notion
of a futuristic prison (which felt like it was copied by films
like Christopher Lambert’s Fortress) except that it’s
run by the prisoners and they are housed by within tall walls.
In
all honesty, the premise of Chaos does have it’s potential
as an enclosed slums that governed by the worst of their lot.
It could really push the limits in the exploitive / gruesome
/ seedy genre but in turn, this film chicken out and decided
to play it boringly safe (hence the NC 16 rating).
Computer
generated blood that’s were splattered all over and
clean exploding body parts (that left very little remains
) were so tame on the gross factors that instead of turning
the viewers head away in disgust, they were comedic enough
to be chuckle at.
Trying
into instill some dark disturbing materials, this film dabble
on socially unacceptable behaviors such as public blowjobs
and incestuous relationship. The result felt rather amateurish
and uneventful as Chaos played it safe and worked within acceptable
boundaries.
Beside
playing it safe, the concept and presentation of the walled
city in the future looked very cheaply done constrained
by financial limitation of this film. Although computer generated
effects are being used here, there aren’t any scene
to depict the grandeur of the wall that surrounds the city.
Might be a minor complaint to some but personally, it just
lessen the credibility of this story.
This
film also failed to make it believable that it’s hard
to get out of this Walled city as the characters of this film
had been trying to tell the viewers repeatedly. Right from
the start, when the police car easily bash through the walls
and started the whole mess (or the story if you prefer), it
makes one wonder how come a Walled city could be so easily
penetrated. I’m aware that Crow (the self appointed
leader of this walled city) had tagged the walled city citizen
with an explosive device to prevent escapes but it makes one
wonder why would he want to do that?
With
such an easily penetrable prison that the government had already
washed their hands off, why would the leader of such “chaotic”
group keep his people under a leash? Wouldn’t the unruly
crowd turn munity on this leader of theirs a long time ago?
The
film maker might be trying to make some political statement
with Chaos but somehow the message didn’t get through.
From the making off segment, the director explained that the
walled city concept was taken from the actual Kowloon Walled
City which actually harbored criminals and the other undesirable
citizen of society. But what was special back in the past
wasn’t translate well to build this “chaotic city”
of the future. There are far too many loopholes that the writer
didn’t consider and tagging the prisoners with explosive
to build the world of anarchy made it even worse.
Personally, there’s only a couple of things that shone
through in Chaos and one of them would be the performance
of Lam Ka Tung. In the midst of unbelievable love affair,
over acted psychotic mother and daughter, it was Lam Ka Tung’s
cynical selfish low life persona that leaves a credible mark
in Chaos.
The other highlight of Chaos would be the ambiguity of the
identity the two survivors from the car crash. There a certain
fun factor in this movie that kept the audience guessing the
real identity of the criminal and the cop. Even though the
identity became clear early in the movie, the ambiguity was
extended on the criminal daughter which had it’s unexpected
bonding that was mildly entertaining (in a incestuous way).
With
hardcore movies like Dog Bite Dog that offers a more realistic
nihilistic world without chickening out, it’s sad to
see Herman Yau’s Chaos attempting to take on the world
of anarchy but backed out in such a cowardly and illogical
manner.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
Making of
This 10 minutes 59 seconds feature started with
the director explaining the Chinese title of Chaos (which
could be literally translated as 'Three Don’t Cares')
and it was taken from the old Hong Kong history where the
Kowloon Walled City was relatively left untouched by the three
authorities (namely the Hong Kong police, Main land China
and Britain).
Beside that interesting information about this film, the making
off soon ventures to the usual making of features where the
director, the producer and the actors started talking about
the characters and the situation that their characters are
in. Sadly the intertwined dramatic emotions between their
characters that they spoke off went unnoticed during the movie.
Trailer
There's
a trailer for Chaos and impressively, it comes with dual soundtracks
which mean that viewers could choose the audio option between
Mandarin and Cantonese. This trailer is kind of spoilish so
avoid if you got spoiler phobia like me.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Chaos comes with Mandarin and Cantonese soundtracks which
could be heard with 2.0 or 5.1 Dolby Digital setting. There
intermittent flashing of Scorpio East Logo on the top right
hand corner during the movie playback. Otherwise, no defects
were noted visually.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
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