“Running Out of Time” Theatrical Poster
Director: Johnnie To
Cast: Andy Lau, Lau Ching Wan, Yoyo Mung, Waise Lee, Lam Suet, Ruby Wong, Shiu Hung Hui
Running Time: 89 min.
By Joe909
A very stylish, slick movie in which Andy Lau finds out that he’s soon to die from cancer, and decides to get even with the gangster who killed his dad (Waise Lee), while at the same time using Lau Ching-Wan as a guinea pig. Johnnie To directed this, so it has his usual flash and craftsmanship, and on top of that he employs a few Guy Ritchie tricks, such as speeding up the film stock in accompaniment with fast-paced music, a la “Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.”
One unusual thing about this script is that two of the three screenwriters have English names. Seeing this after the movie, I wasn’t very surprised, as ROOT has a definite Western feel to it. The plot is well-paced and doesn’t feature outlandish subplots that have nothing to do with the rest of the film. The characters are each fully-developed and have disparate personalities. Most importantly of all, the humor is genuinely funny and isn’t that slapstick Cantonese style that just doesn’t translate very well in the West.
It’s surprising that in a film which features a main character who’s dying of cancer that there are a lot of humorous moments. Lau Ching-Wan’s bumbling boss is funny throughout, and the scene in which he mistakenly believes that LCW is the cancer sufferer had me chuckling out loud. Funnier yet is a short scene that takes a jibe at kung-fu movies: Andy Lau, dressed in an SDU outfit and trying to escape a building, runs into a security guard. Andy starts throwing elaborate kung-fu punches, and the guard tries to block them. Lau abruptly stops swinging and just looks down at the guy for a few moments. The guard, still crouching in a defensive posture, looks back up quizzically at Andy. Then suddenly Lau lashes out with both hands and knocks the guy’s head into the wall.
It isn’t all perfect, though. The final confrontation with Waise Lee’s gangster character could’ve packed more of a punch, but I will say that it was cool to see a HK movie that didn’t feature a guns-blazing climax. Matter of fact, the violence and action setpieces are minimal in this movie, but the lack of them doesn’t detract from the movie’s impact. Actually, less action would’ve been better, as the worst, most implausible scene is one of the action setpieces. The two Laus keep running to and from each other’s car as a group of gunmen fire at them. Each time they’re outside of the cars, the bullets conveniently miss them entirely. It just comes off as pretty goofy, but since this film is mostly a comedy I guess it’s not so big a deal.
Also of note is Raymond Wong’s score, which is as great as all the others I’ve heard from him. One complaint though is that on the dvd (and possibly theatrical release as well) the music is distorted and blurry around the edges, making it sound like your speakers have blown. I don’t know if this is the way Wong intended the music to sound, or if it’s just another example of a poor print transfer.
Joe909’s Rating: 7.5/10
