One Nite in Mongkok

On paper One Nite in Mongkok doesn’t sound too promising:

In the run-up to Christmas tensions between two rival triads have spilled over into bloodshed. A mainland assassin has been sent for and, should he succeed in his mission, a full-scale gang war is all but inevitable.

Evading the police – prominent amongst their number the requisite hot-headed, ambitious youngster and world-weary old-timer – the assassin hides out in a rooms-by-the-quarter-hour hotel.

There he happens upon a prostitute from his home province being slapped around by her pimp and intervenes: Our hired killer is really just a good guy at heart. Anyone really surprised?

Maybe this girl can help him locate his ex, who left the mainland for Hong Kong’s bright lights a few months ago and hasn’t been heard from since? And – again wouldn’t you just know it? – our prostitute turns out to be a tart with a heart happy to help him in his quest.

With this compendium of cliché, the best you can hope for would seem to be an efficient and unpretentious actioner – and all the more so when your two leads, Daniel Wu and Cecilia Cheung, are better known for their looks than acting.

But, while handling the action with aplomb – the violence is low-key but high-impact, short in duration but long in consequences in a manner more reminiscent of Infernal Affairs than The Killer – One Nite in Mongkok writer-director Tung-Shing Yee also gives us much, much more.

Stock figures emerge as complex, living, breathing individuals, propelling a character-driven drama that bears equal comparison with Wong Kar Wai’s Fallen Angels in tone and, in its own way, accomplishment.

Definitely worth seeing.