True Mob Story, A

Cheung-Dee is a member of the triadthe Chinese Mafia - and is the leader of a smaller street-gang. In a shooting he saves his leader, but also witnesses his wife get ki lied. He gets the reputation of being the triad's best fighter, a fact he finds hard to reconcile with being a good role-model for his son. After having failed at an assignment he has to fight to win back his reputation, which sets his integrity on line.
At first glance Cheng-Dee has everything one needs to be a good film-gangster.
He is handsome, charismatic and welltrained, a master at fighting and seems to be unpredictably dangerous. He is however not the smartest of men, and a bit to amiable. He is taken advantage of and is fooled without even knowing it. He also has the biggest handicap a person from the underworld can have: empathy. He shows great tenderness and gratitude toward his wife's friend, who helps him take care of his son - the son who he values more than anything else and to whom he is most scared of loosi ng his d ign ity. Th is gives the film streaks of sentimentality, that are countered by great amounts of irony.
The moral theme and the sentimentality in a harsh and violent environment is something that is recognizable from the
Hong Kong-film in general, not at least from John Woo. As in his films A True Mob Storycontains a great amount of action, however less spectacular.
It is interesting that guns are not used in the fights between the gangsters. Here they stick to good old-fashioned streetfighting, if so with baseball bats and machetes as weapons. A fight between two men erupts into a cluster of fighters, where the viewer can not possibly see who is fighting whom.
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Premiärstatus
Europeisk premiär: Orig. titel
Lung Joi Geung Wu: Medverkande
Andy Lau Tak-Wah, Gigi Leung Wing-Kay, Mark Cheng Ho-Nam: Producent
Jing Wong: Manus
Jing Wong: Foto
Cheng Keung: Musik
Peter Kam: Talat språk
Cantonese