Protege

Year:2007
Director:Derek Yee Tung-Sing
Cast:Andy Lau Tak-Wah, Daniel Wu, Louis Koo Tin-Lok, Anita Yuen Wing-Yee, Zhang Jingchu, Derek Yee Tung-Sing, Liu Kai-Chi
Description:
Hong Kong Cinema gets a shot in the arm - both literally
and figuratively - with Protégé,
a powerful drug drama directed by Derek Yee, who was
last seen slumming with the routine romantic comedy
Drink-Drank-Drunk. Protégé
brings Yee back to his strengths, telling a detailed
and thoughtful narrative in riveting, emotional style.
The themes in Protégé are nothing
new, and how could they be? We live in a global community,
and by now everybody has seen Traffic,
be it the BBC drama or Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning
film. Yee brings a similar tale to Hong Kong, and
he does so in a way that creates an immediate emotional
response. Protégé prods its audience
to feel and react, something that a successful motion
picture probably should do. However, Yee doesn't fully
develop his screenplay and characters, sometimes letting
them suffer behind the grand anti-drug message. Still,
it's all - or at least mostly - good. Telling us
not to do drugs is usually a boring message, but in
Protégé that message is most
definitely felt.
Andy Lau stars as Kwan,
a successful businessman and family man who also happens
to be Hong Kong's top drug lord. However, the years
have taken their toll on Kwan; he suffers from diabetes
and is looking to retire. But he's just appointed
a successor: Nick , who has managed Kwan's
drug handlers for years with expert efficiency. It
looks like a good move, as Nick seems more intelligent
and able than Kwan's other partners. Unfortunately,
Kwan is a lousy judge of character: Nick is really
a cop, having spent seven years undercover to ferret
out Kwan's heroin operation. Progress has been slow;
Nick doesn't know where the drugs come from, or where
they're made, and Kwan is reluctant to show anyone.
But Nick's appointment to Kwan's heir comes with a
full initiation into the druglord's empire, from the
laboratory all the way back to their source in the
Golden Triangle. With each step, Nick comes closer
to finishing his undercover assignment and putting
Kwan and his operation out of commission. However,
each step also brings Nick closer to betraying a man
whose trust he's earned. Where do Nick's loyalties
truly lie, and will he find the guts to put away Kwan
once and for all?
Protégé
proffers an expected complexity with its iconic "undercover
cop with divided loyalties" plotline, but the
film eschews Hard Boiled/Infernal Affairs
riffs for something that sounds less exciting: education
on the local drug trade, with a gray-haired Andy Lau
as the tour guide. Once Nick is tapped to succeed
Kwan, he gets the full-on tour, first checking out
the local "kitchen", where they cook the
goods, plus he meets the warehouse manager, and finally
visits the poppy fields in Thailand where the stuff
is originally grown. Throughout this process, we get
a constant educational earful, which includes info
on how they cut the merchandise, how they move it,
how the business is doing - basically the complete picture on running
your own successful drug empire. According to Kwan,
the trick is strict separation of tasks. Manufacturing,
storage, and delivery are handled separately, and
the three should never meet. Security is one reason
for this setup, but another is it makes the business
into what it is: a business. As Kwan notes in an acidic
monologue, the drug trade is just a business to him,
and the consequences are not his problem.
But it is Nick's
problem - or, he chooses to make it such. Protégé
begins at the end of its narrative, with a post-undercover
Nick ruminating on why people take drugs in the first
place. The film does deliver an answer to Nick's existential
query, though it's rather compact and could easily
be the tagline for a 12-step course on beating addiction.
The film's exploration of its topic is rich and affecting,
however. Aside from hanging around with Kwan, Nick
also chances into a relationship with Fan , a single mother whose heroin
addiction threatens to consume her. Nick at first
abhors her drug addiction, spurning her when she's
most desperate, but soon he tries to understand and
even care for her. The experience puts his relationship
with Kwan in question. Despite his lingering respect
for his boss, can Nick forgive Kwan for his
complicity in Fan's troubles? Protégé
gets more mileage out of this conflict - Nick the
witness to addiction vs. Nick the fledgling drug lord - than the undercover cop/criminal duality that one
may expect after reading the film's synopsis. The
two plotlines also comprise both ends of the drug
trade - the dealer and the addict - giving audiences
a panoramic view of the film's sometimes overemphasized
anti-drug message. Yes, we get that drugs are bad.
Do the filmmakers have to remind us so often?
Maybe not, but given
the film's transparent aims, it seems that they want
to. Protégé's themes are rather
commonplace and even trite, and the underdeveloped
and sometimes mishandled characters only add to the
potential for a public service announcement overdose.
Nick is remarkably naive for a cop who's been undercover
for seven years, and seems to express his tortured
existence in an external, rather than internal manner.
Given his frequent reactions of shock or disapproval,
one wonders how he was able to ingratiate himself
so far into Kwan's circle of trust without drawing
extra suspicion. Kwan is also problematic; the character
possesses a believable humanity, and his ruthlessness
and denial is something Andy Lau effectively conveys.
However, the film neglects to fill in one blank in
its exploration of the Hong Kong drug trade: how does
a smart family man like Kwan get involved in such
a horrifying, morally bankrupt biz? Given how much
we learn about the ins and outs of the whole drug
trade, that nugget of info seems to be a missing piece.
Louis Koo's character
is also a misstep. The Tanned One plays Fan's loathsome
husband, who supposedly spread his heroin addiction
to her. Koo strains valiantly in the role, dirtying
his looks and even wearing a set of false teeth to
appear less handsome than his usual dashing screen
image. However, the character never develops beyond
a caricature of a drug addict, and Koo's jittery overacting
sometimes elicits laughs. If the point of the character
was simply to cast an actor against type, then the
filmmakers succeeded, but otherwise the character
is handled poorly - especially when it comes time
to decide his fate. The filmmakers step outside of
reality and deliver a coda to the character that may
please justice-seeking audiences, but it also feels
inherently false. At times Protégé
doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Is it an
uncompromising drama? A cop-criminal thriller complete
with crowd-pleasing justice? Ironic commentary on
the ineffectiveness of law enforcement? Or an existential
exploration of man's emptiness, which the film suggests
causes and enables substance abuse? There's a lot
going on in Protégé, and it doesn't
all tie together neatly.
But Derek Yee
is at the helm of this film, and that can only be
a good thing. Though the screenplay sometimes seems
unfocused, Yee ties things together with compelling
cinematic finesse. Yee changes up his technique frequently,
sometimes going for edgy and stylish, and other times
using subtle details to foreshadow later horrors.
The content is really nothing new, but that's fine.
Derek Yee has never been a filmmaker to offer new
themes or unique characters, but his handling of generic
material may be stronger than any Hong Kong director
currently working. Films
like 2 Young and Lost in Time succeeded
in large part due to their copious detail on everyday
life. Protégé isn't about everyday
life, but the details it offers on the drug trade
are eminently interesting. Nick's initiation into
Kwan's world feels fascinating and complete, the didactic
portions of the film managing to involve and entertain
as much as they educate. Derek Yee has a knack for
making explanation into entertainment, but he doesn't
forget to deliver the occasional knockout blow. During
one harrowing sequence, Nick is cornered by customs
cops , and must either help the rival cops or his
undercover drug-trading brethren. The subsequent raid
on the "kitchen" is amazingly intense, mixing
black comedy and surprising violence into a harrowing
and hyperemotional sequence that affects long after
the film ends.
The scenes detailing Fan's
addiction are equally powerful, mostly due to Zhang
Jingchu's raw, compelling performance. The actress
throws herself into the part with abandon, and is
a lock to be remembered a year from now when end-of-the
year awards come around. Despite some problems with
their characters, both Daniel Wu and Andy Lau are
exceptionally effective, as is the long-missed Anita
Yuen, who turns up in a small role as Kwan's wife.
Louis Koo breaks type effectively, though the problems
with his character are perhaps the film's largest
fault. Protégé possesses compelling
detail and an exemplary production, but it seems to
fall slightly short of the high expectations one now
equates with a Derek Yee film. Protégé
is not as satisfying as One Nite in Mongkok,
nor is it as emotionally resonant as Lost in Time
or C'est La Vie, Mon Cheri. But Protégé
is enormously entertaining and even powerful, delivering
a compelling cinema experience that packs an immediate
and unexpected punch. As soon as Protégé
ends, it seems something important and worthwhile
happened. That feeling may not last, and further scrutiny
of the film reveals more holes than any Hong Kong
Cinema fan would probably like to admit. Sorry to
say, the film does have flaws, and they ultimately
prevent the film from achieving the instant classic
status its pedigree would seem to offer. Still, even if it
doesn't match those lofty expecations, the ride is
more than worth it.