Triangle

Year:2007
Director:Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam Ling-Tung, Johnnie To Kei-Fung
Cast:Simon Yam Tat-Wah, Louis Koo Tin-Lok, Sun Hong-Lei, Kelly Lin, Gordon Lam Ka-Tung, Lam Suet, You Yong
Description:
Those crazy directors
- always screwing with us. You know how it is: you
go to the cinema thinking that you're going to be
watching a film about something. It could be about
a criminal investigation, a struggling single mother,
a trio of kick-ass cops, or maybe a couple of girls
who aren't twins. It doesn't matter what the actual
subject matter is, but the film moves forward, seemingly
developing its story, idea, theme, or maybe just its
emotions, all of which should supposedly connect to
an audience. But then it happens: the film suddenly
becomes about something else. It stops being about
the story or the characters or some overarching theme;
with a couple of knowing plot twists or an obvious
use of technique, the film becomes about some guy
who yells "action" and "cut", who you can't see onscreen
and yet pulls all the strings. The film is no longer
about what happens; it's about what that guy will
do. That crazy director.
Welcome to the world of Triangle,
a "relay film" that takes three very good directors,
a group of interesting actors, a loaded premise, and
then proceeds to go pretty much nowhere in a messy,
inconsistent manner. Produced by Johnnie To's Milkyway
Image production company, Triangle unites directors
Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and Johnnie To to tell the tale
of a heist gone wrong, which the directors develop
by following up on each other's leftovers. Basically,
one director leads off, starting all the elements
and subplots, whereupon another director takes over,
developing the same elements in his own chosen manner.
Then, one last guy comes in and bats clean-up. Tsui
Hark is the leadoff batter, introducing the audience
to Sam , a harried fellow who's being pressured
into taking on a getaway driver role in a proposed
jewelry store robbery. The one pressuring him is supposed
pal Fai , who sweats like a madman about
the situation because a trio of surly triad enforcers
are after him for some dough, and Sam's role in the
robbery is a large part of their deal.
Sam is reluctant, however,
and his drinking buddy Mok advises
him to stay away from Fai's get-rich-through-crime
scheme. But even Mok isn't averse to a different sort
of heist. The three meet a mysterious stranger who
gives them a genuine gold coin and clues to a possible
buried treasure, located in Hong Kong's Legislative
Council building. All three need the dough , so they endeavor to steal the treasure
together. The problems: the roving triads after Fai,
Sam's unstable wife Ling , and dirty cop
Wen , who also happens to be sleeping
with Ling and is involved in some shady, threatening
relationship with Fai. In this opening segment, Tsui
Hark introduces the elements deftly and efficiently,
easily drawing the audience into the story. There's
some potent stuff introduced, as well as some rather
silly developments, but Tsui struts his stuff effectively,
starting the Triangle ride with both style
and verve.
Ringo Lam picks up where
Tsui Hark leaves off, and puts his own spin on things,
introducing emotional complexity, and some unexpected,
even bizarre twists. His ideas don't fully pay off,
however, and Triangle stumbles heavily as it
simply stops making sense. Narrative leaps occur,
eliciting possible exclamations of "What the hell?",
and the film starts to become experimental in a bewildering
fashion. Lam gives both Fai and Mok short shrift,
and instead concentrates heavily on the relationship
between Sam and Ling. In Tsui's segment, the possibility
is raised that Sam may be trying to slowly murder
Ling, and Lam's segment seems to explore that subplot
more deeply. However, Lam doesn't provide any answers,
and his characters ultimately come off as senseless.
Sam is more calculating and even menacing than his
initial meek character seemed to indicate, and Ling
goes from unstable and paranoid to greedy and opportunistic.
Both characters seem to change drastically, indicating
that Lam either radically interpreted Tsui's intentions,
or simply ignored them for his own perceived notions
of where the film should go. Regardless of whether
or not his intentions were justified, the results
aren't as inspiring as they are simply puzzling. In
its second segment, Triangle sags.
Luckily, Johnnie To bats clean-up,
saving the day in his own inimitable style. That style,
however, is achieved by largely ignoring what came
before, changing characters and situations to serve
up a vintage sampler platter of Johnnie To's ironic
absurdities and thinly-veiled Buddhist themes. There's
some cool stuff going on in To's segment, including
an amusing restaurant-set standoff and subsequent
shootout that takes a sitcom-style setup and turns
it into cinema gold. To stages a drawn-out mix-em-up
involving similar-looking bags and a mismatched grouping
of characters, who all coincidentally show up in the
same place at the same time to get involved in To's
darkly funny criminal wackiness. There's style and
panache on display, and To gets effective performances
from Lam Suet, You Yong, and Sun Hong-Lei to bring
the film to its final, self-amused parting shot. When
Triangle ends, the feeling is one of cinematic
bemusement. Yeah, it was a bit odd and even scattershot,
but it was also rather fun.
But was it fun for the right
reasons? Probably not, as Triangle isn't really
a film, but an experiment in auteur excess that only
works if someone is familiar with not only the Milkyway
house style, but also the "relay film" concept. Generally,
the idea is that each director is supposed to continue
what came before, but as the film progresses, each
director actually seems to ignore the preceding director's'
work rather than follow up on it. Subplots get dropped,
situations go from realistic to ridiculous, and characters
change drastically. Nowhere is this more obvious than
in the character of Ling and her relationship with
Sam. Each director seems to be exploring a different
idea of the struggle between marital affection and
distrust, and their viewpoints differ sharply. Kelly
Lin's Ling is the most problematic, as her character
seems to possess multiple clich閐 personalities, becoming
a potentially revealing insight into each director's
views and/or prejudices. Someone could easily dissect
each director's handling of her character and come
up with some idea of how each views women. Feminist
film theorists: this is a job for you.
But most people aren't feminist
film theorists, and they're not card-carrying Hong
Kong Cinema fanboys either. For casual viewers, Triangle feels like an obvious misfire as it doesn't do what
a film is generally expected to do, i.e. take a defined
set of characters and situations and develop them
in a compelling, consistent manner. This is not a
movie for casual audiences because it doesn't provide
what mass audiences perceive as entertaining or necessary.
The film's suspense doesn't arise from situations
or characters, but from the question of what each
director will pull out of their ass next. That's hardly
the usual definition of a successful work, though
many inclined audiences will likely forgive these
guys anyway. Triangle fails as a standard film,
but succeeds as a self-indulgent cinema experiment
showcasing the exciting choices and curious missteps
perpetrated by three damn fine directors - most especially
Johnnie To, whose relevance on the Hong Kong Cinema
scene has now eclipsed former local kingpins Tsui
Hark and Ringo Lam. Fans of To are sure to go gaga
over this collection of Milkyway players and themes,
and the crime film iconography and To's sharp sense
of irony are as entertaining and enthralling as ever.
Triangle obviously
caters to Milkyway fanboys - a smart marketing move,
because for casual audiences, the film will probably
not fly, rendering the film an interesting if not
infuriating curiosity. It's a shame that Tsui Hark,
Ringo Lam, and Johnnie To couldn't actually take the
"relay film" premise and create a solid, consistent
film instead of simply choosing to each go their own
way. Had they managed to pull of something that cohered
into a single effective work, then the film could
have been a true accomplishment instead of a messy
and uneven exercise in entertaining self-indulgence.
As it is, Triangle is simply a fun and very
flawed in-joke for the Asia-centered cineaste, and
a fanboy high-five from three crazy directors who
know their stuff. Thanks a lot, guys. Now go and make
your own movies again.