Three

三人行

Hong Kong/China, 2016, colour, 2.35:1, 87 mins.

Director: Du Qifeng 杜琪峰 [Johnnie To].

Rating: 8/10.

Hospital-set crime/action drama is a strong return to form by the Milkyway Image team.

STORY

Hong Kong, the present day. One night at Victoria Hospital, a police team led by Chen Weile (Gu Tianle) brings in a gangster arrested during a jewel robbery, Zhang Lixin (Zhong Hanliang), who has a bullet lodged in his brain. He refuses, however, to undergo surgery, despite the advice of neurosurgeon Tong Qian (Zhao Wei), a Mainlander who came to Hong Kong at the age of 17, learned Cantonese, and has since worked her way up. She dresses his head wound, and says the bullet is lodged in a safe place at the moment; but she adds that anything could happen in the next six hours, and by then it will be too late to operate. On the fourth floor, Zhang Lixin is put in ward C4 that includes Zhong (Lu Haopeng), a garrulous old man in his 70s; Hong (Wang Zixuan), an angry young man who’s been paralysed since Tong Qian operated on him; and Ze (Hong Tianming), a computer geek. Currently, Zhang Lixin has all his faculties, and Chen Weile realises he is playing for time until his associates can rescue him. Tong Qian resents the way in which the police take over the ward and try to question the prisoner, who is handcuffed to his bed. However, Chen Weile, who is not above bending the rules, manages to trick Zhang Lixin into putting his fingerprints on a gun in order to prove he deliberately shot himself. Later, the dedicated but over-tired Tong Qian loses a patient during an operation, and is reprimanded by her superior, Huo Xianhui (Zhang Zhaohui). But she refuses to go home and rest. Chen Weile manages to get through on the number of a “friend” whom Zhang Lixin wanted to call, but the man hangs up, guessing that it’s the police. Zhang Lixin has a nervous attack in bed but still won’t agree to an operation. Still hoping she can change his mind, Tong Qian calls the number against the wishes of the police, and reveals where Zhang Lixin is and the name of the policeman who shot him. Chen Weile prepares for an armed siege. And Tong Qian secretly tries to induce unconsciousness in Zhang Lixin so she can operate on him.

REVIEW

After the musical misfire Office 华丽上班族 (2015), in which he didn’t seem to have a strong point-of-view on the material, Hong Kong director-producer Du Qifeng 杜琪峰 [Johnnie To] bounces back on much more familiar ground with Three 三人行, a corkscrewy crime/action drama entirely set in a hospital. Shot, like Office, on a soundstage in Guangdong province, China, and with the artificiality underlined by the action being compressed into 24 hours, it’s a tightly constructed, almost theatrical drama that is Du’s best movie since Sparrow 文雀 (2008), even though it lacks that film’s strong personal resonances. As often on Milkyway Image productions, the finale doesn’t quite match the build-up, despite its undeniable spectacle; but overall the film just scrapes ahead of Du’s best of the past decade – Life without Principle 夺命金 (2011), Romancing in Thin Air 高海拔之恋II (2012) and Drug War 毒战 (2012) – in technique and construction.

Du has been in a hospital before (his patchy 2000 comedy Help!!! 辣手回春), and the novelty of staging a shoot-out in one was won long ago by Wu Yusen 吴宇森 [John Woo] with Hard-Boiled 辣手神探 (1992). But Three is like neither of them: for the writers, the hospital is simply a stage on which to act out a character-based thriller, as a wounded, arrested gangster plays for time before his associates launch a bid to rescue him. The script is only peripherally concerned with how the hospital operates, staff politics and so on – all of which Du and co-director Wei Jiahui 韦家辉 [Wai Ka-fai] already dealt with in Help!!!. Instead, the tension comes from playing with the susceptibilities of the audience, which knows everything is going to end really badly but is not quite sure when Du & Co. will finally pull the pin from the grenade. As the prisoner plays mind-games while handcuffed to his bed in an average ward, and the police try to break him before his associates find out where he is, a dedicated neurosurgeon (believably played by Mainland actress-director Zhao Wei 赵薇) is caught in the middle, between duty and anger, as she pushes for him to go under the knife.

Zhao’s doctor is the audience’s way into the drama – dedicated and ambitious, but tired and over-worked, she’s permanently on the edge of ruining her hard-won career by doing something really stupid as the world of crime intrudes on her hermetically sealed universe. But the film cleverly shows there are no hard-and-fast borders between the two: while Zhao’s doctor is trying to get the police to leave a surgical room, the prisoner suddenly wreaks havoc in a way that requires the cops’ muscle; later, after she’s scolded the police for trying to interrogate the prisoner in a public ward, she herself decides to bend the rules for her own purposes. As the script makes clear, it’s only a matter of time before the worlds of saving and taking lives collide; and one of the film’s pleasures is the way in which Du & Co. move their cast of characters around in preparation, first at the 40-minute mark (in what turns out to be a feint) and later positioning everyone on the chessboard before the pin is pulled 68 minutes in.

When it comes, the four-minute bullet ballet – a combination of real and acted slo-mo, visual effects and whip-pans, all set to a song – is effective but not quite original or wah! enough to justify the long build-up. The gun action is weakly choreographed, with too many misses at almost point-blank range, and a subsidiary finale lacks real tension. Just as the score by Du regular Xavier Jamaux (Mad Detective 神探, 2007; Sparrow; Drug War) is better at stoking atmosphere than accompanying action, so the screenplay is better at building expectation than delivering dramatically satisfying goods – a recurrent Milkyway weakness.

Despite all that, performances are generally strong. Even re-voiced into Cantonese (for the Hong Kong version), Zhao manages to remain the emotional and ethical heart of the movie, knitting together what would otherwise have been a series of individual sketches. The rest of the cast is largely male, led by Du regular Gu Tianle 古天乐 [Louis Koo] as the chief cop who’s not above bending the rules to get results and actor-singer Zhong Hanliang 钟汉良 [Wallace Chung] as the cocky prisoner who can still quote Bertrand Russell with a bullet lodged in his brain. Severely miscast, Gu is at his most wooden and the film’s weakest link; instead, Zhong is the main character motor, and well supported by a chorus of supports that includes veteran Lu Haipeng 卢海鹏 as a garrulous old patient. Milkyway regular Lin Xue 林雪 [Lam Suet] seems tonally out-of-place here as a scraggy cop; much better attuned are Xie Tianhua 谢天华 [Michael Tse] and Huang Haoran 黄浩然 as two very focused assassins and Zhang Zhaohui 张兆辉 [Eddie Cheung] as the calm superior of Zhao’s over-stressed surgeon.

Editing and widescreen photography by regulars David Richardson and Zheng Zhaoqiang 郑兆强 [Cheng Siu-keung] create a believable hospital vibe in the sets by veteran Yu Jia’an 于家安 [Bruce Yu]. The film’s Chinese title literally means “Three People Walking Together”, a phrase meaning that everyone can learn things from other people. The use is presumably ironic, as not much of that goes on in Three.

In China, the film grossed RMB100 million, twice the hawl of Office but only two-thirds of Drug War‘s.

CREDITS

Presented by China Film Media Asia Audio Video Distribution (CN), Media Asia Film Production (HK), iQiyi Motion Pictures (CN). Produced by Milkyway Image (Hong Kong) (HK).

Script: You Naihai, Liu Haoliang, Mai Tianshu. Photography: Zheng Zhaoqiang [Cheng Siu-keung]. Editing: David Richardson, Liang Zhanlun. Music: Xavier Jamaux. Production design: Yu Jia’an [Bruce Yu]. Art direction: Zhang Zhaokang. Costume design: Zhang Zhaokang. Sound: Feng Yaotang, Shen Liting, Du Duzhi, Wu Shuyao. Action: Huang Weiliang [Jack Wong], Du Qifeng [Johnnie To], Yi Tianxiong. Visual effects: Tommy Hellowing, Luo Weihao (Different Digital Design). Executive direction: Chen Jun.

Cast: Zhao Wei (Tong Qian, doctor), Gu Tianle [Louis Koo] (Chen Weile/Ken, chief inspector), Zhong Hanliang [Wallace Chung] (Zhang Lixin), Lu Haipeng (Zhong, elderly patient), Zhang Zhaohui [Eddie Cheung] (Huo Xianhui, doctor, Tong Qian’s superior), Lin Xue [Lam Suet] (Fatty, constable), Gong Cien [Mimi Kung] (head nurse), Hong Tianming (Ze, geeky patient), Xie Tianhua (gangster in suit), Huang Haoran (“lawyer” gangster), Wang Zixuan (Hong, paralysed patient), Ou Jintang (Tong, sergeant), Zhu Jianjun (Zhou/Steven, doctor), He Guoxuan (Yang, constable), Zhang Guoqiang (Wu, surgery patient), Tan Yuying (Wu’s wife), Zhan Bingxi (Li Zhuoxi, senior inspector), Wu Huashan (Yin, constable), Shi Zunan (gangster), Jing Wei (He, senior inspector).

Release: China, 24 Jun 2016; Hong Kong, 30 Jun 2016.