Blue Lightning - Father And Son

Nov

18

Blue Lightning - Father And Son

≡ Category: Action, Drama, Hong Kong, Movie Reviews By Country, Recommended, Suspense |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Drama/ Suspense/ Action
Director: Raymond Lee
Year: 1991

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Blue Lightning was one of the first Hong Kong flicks I ever saw, and it impressed the heck out of me at the time. I saw it on the big screen instead of on video, which probably made a difference.

Back then, I was impressed by the cinematography, so different from Western films. Blue Lightning is dark, dark, dark, full of shadows and blue neon. The version I saw ended with the death of one of the heroes — the bad guys get away with everything. It’s one of the bleakest endings I’ve ever seen. Although the violence in Blue Lightning is blunt, it’s a far cry from the nonstop beatings and cruelty in other Hong Kong films. Blue Lightning focuses more on the story of Lam Sau Yat (Danny Lee) and his son, Lim (Wong Kwan-Yuen). Unique in his filmography, Danny Lee plays an antihero. At the beginning of the movie, he’s a self-hating loser, a disgraced cop who hides inside the bottle. Lim is living with his mother, but she and her lover are killed by assassins, while they are looking for an incriminating tape of some kind. Lam Sau Yat takes custody of his son, and is forced to straighten out his act.

The father and son slowly bond, but remember, this is a Hong Kong where assassins think nothing of killing a child, and car accident victims are left on the tarmac to bleed out before anyone will stop to help. True, we’d like to see the killers brought to justice, but more importantly, will Lim and his father Lam Sau Yat be allowed to live in peace?

As Lim, Wong Kwan-Yuen is a delightful little boy, grateful for so little that you just want him to catch a break for once in his young life. Danny Lee is convincingly appalling as a self-pitying drunk, but as he weans himself from the bottle and allows himself to grow close to his son, the character steadily grows warmer and more admirable. The relationship between father and son is the heart of the picture, and what gives Blue Lightning its value.

The straight and narrow policeman, Ching Hay, although well acted by Tony Leung, is pretty much boilerplate, as is the plot about blackmail, underage prostitutes, and political corruption.

The thugs are played by the usual charismatic Hong Kong character actors, guys like Victor Hon and Lee Siu-Kei.

When I saw Blue Lightning in the theater, it ended with the utter defeat of the heroes. It was heartrendingly powerful. In the DVD, there is a more typical action packed ending, in which the villains are exposed, shot, and/or arrested. Lim even shows up so he can grin and give a thumbs up to the cops, which kind of insults the intelligence of the audience when you consider everything he’s been through.

I used to think that Hong Kong audiences were more sophisticated about unhappy endings than American audiences, but I’ve since found out during the Golden Age of Hong Kong (1985-1995), the pictures that made the most money were typically either nonsense comedies, fluffy romances, or action movies in which the good guys won and the bad guys were unambigiously vanquished. In other words, the same dumbass happy endings that Americans financially reward. The reason that there were so many good Hong Kong movies during the late 80s and early 90s is because filmmakers forced more hard edged themes down the viewers’ throats. If the Hong Kong filmmaking community had simply given audiences what they wanted, there would have been no Golden Age.

It just goes to show you that an artist’s true job in society isn’t to mirror the mindlessness of the audience, but rather to lead them by the nose to something better.

End of rant.

Anyway, you probably want to know if the action is any good. Well, there’s a couple of notable action scenes: a shootout in an apartment, and the grand finale in a public park. But Blue Lightning is really more of a suspense movie. Poor Lim is frequently in jeopardy, and much of the goings on have a cat and mouse quality to them. Director Raymond Lee handles these sequences with an engagingly crude energy.

Anyway, Blue Lightning is not the masterpiece I remembered, but it’s well worth seeing for fans of Hong Kong cinema. Put it somewhere down in the middle of your queue.

Note: as far as I know, Blue Lightning is only available on DVD from BlueLaser.com.