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Time And Tide
Directed by Hark Tsui
Starring: Nicholas Tse, Wu Bai, Candy Lo, Cathy Tsui
Running Time: 1:53
Country: Hong Kong
Year: 2000
Web: Official Site
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After two flops in Hollywood starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Knock Off and Double Team, Tsui Hark is back in a Hong Kong production with Time and Tide, featuring young singer Nicholas Tse and rock star Wu Bai in one of his first movie roles.
After a night of hard drinking, Tyler (Nicholas Tse) gets lesbian Ah Jo (Cathy Chui) pregnant. The next morning, after realizing what's happened, she runs away. Tyler tries to help her out by regularly slipping money under her door. Tyler's dream is to go to South America, and he meets Jack (Wu Bai), a mercenary in South Africa whose girlfriend Ah Hui (Candy Lo) is also pregnant. As Jack's past is bound to catch up with him, his former South American colleagues turn up and incredible gunshots as well as the end of the story follow.
It's jumbled and fairly incomprehensible at first. The film opens with a voice-over about the creation of the world, which is supposed to reveal the main character's psychology. Following that is the scene where Tyler sleeps with Ah Jo. The style is so fresh you almost think you're watching a Wong Kar-Wai movie. From there, action, gunshots and explosions take center stage, and the realization hits that the overly long introduction was useless and hardly covers the holes in the screenplay.
The film style is obviously influenced by John Woo: friendship in misfortune, doves and gunfire take over the previous pseudo-psychology as well as sentimental problems.
Tsui Hark's huge inventiveness lacks structure in Time and Tide. His great creativity overflows and finally scatters. While Tsui Hark has influenced lots of directors, including John Woo, he lacks what makes John Woo more successful: building a story and characterization.
This movie will mostly be remembered for its incredible gunfight where everybody—baddies, heroes, cameras, and audience—is suspended to cables and jumps from story to story while avoiding enemy bullets. This sequence will probably enter the hall of fame of Hong Kong action movies, just like the ladder scene in Once Upon a Time in China (both sequences were atrociously copied recently in The Musketeer, thanks to Xin Xin Xiong and Peter Hyams.) Tsui Hark chose to show this wild and technically impressive sequence featuring an almost unreal Wu Bai with a less interesting one, an awkward Nicholas Tse trying to survive in the building at the same time. His only weapon is a fake pistol and he escapes death by hiding in a fridge… Tsui's choice is bold but the action loses its dynamism, and the final explosion (with poor-looking computer generated flames) doesn't help.
In addition, some scenes are very disappointing, particularly the bank attack, another slaughter that doesn't add to the story. The runway scene almost looks like a ridiculous parody. The final sequence, a double face-to-face fight taking place under a roof and in a basement, doesn't deliver either.
Even worse, there are racist trends in the movie. While Once Upon a Time in China developed a certain xenophobia towards Western people, we can now wonder why these South American guys are so repugnant and cruel.
Wu Bai, who previously had a small part in a good little Taiwanese movie called The Personals, is soulless here. To his defense, his super hero character doesn't have any chance for any romantic and passionate tirades. Nicholas Tse does a somewhat better job since his character is more fragile and subtle. A general regret: the movie is neither moving nor deep, but only an action movie, period.
What's left? Hong Kong movie buffs will appreciate the birth on the battlefield, the presence of pigeons (though not as good as John Woo's), the incredible choreography of gunshots and the crazy editing. While these strong elements will satisfy them and make them feel at home, the rest of the audience will be stunned and probably shocked by so much violence, regretting such a choice in these tough days of 15 new releases a week.
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Laurent Ziliani
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Copyright ©1998-2000 LA PLUME NOIRE All rights reserved.
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Time And Tide review
