What better way to end the Festival--and your Sunday evening--than by watching the final screening of Soi Cheang's Motorway? There are car chases! Cops! Cops in car chases!
Keep in mind, though, that Motorwayis not an open world video game, so drive carefully on the way home, people. Don't try to emulate the title of Cheang's last movie, Accident.
Motorway promises to be an excellent car chase movie, which means it's a good excuse--and completely necessary--to revisit fine car chases of yore to get everyone in the mood!
Actor Anthony Wong Chau-Sang returns to the festival, at least in cellulloid form, for Soi Cheang's car chase thriller, Motorway. Wong plays an older cop who mentors a younger one, played by Shawn Yue, in driving like a mad man.
Wong has played a lot of experienced detectives and slick older Triad brothers in the last decade or so. He's acted in almost two hundred films and directed two. He's played in uncountable movies either directed by Johnnie To or produced by To's production company, Milkyway, which produced Motorway. But he had an earlier career, playing psychopathic killers, weasely betrayers and just plain creepy guys. He got his start in Category III films, Hong Kong's version of NC-17 or X movies with graphic nudity, sex and violence.
His breakout role was in a Category III film based on a real serial killer, Wong Chi-Hang, Herman Yau's The Untold Story: Human Meat Roast Pork Buns starring--and written by--Danny Lee.
Wong won best actor at the 1993 Hong Kong Film Awards for his portrayal of Wong Chi-Hang.
He was the weaselly, traitorous friend of Chow Yun-Fat's Jeff in Ringo Lam's Full Contact (1992). (Please note the excellent flamboyance of Simon Yam Tat-Wah). He played a psychopathic Triad boss in John Woo's Hard-boiled (1992) was an unstoppable warrior thing in Johnnie To's The Heroic Trio and he made a clear plastic raincoat just plain icky in Benny Chan/Daniel Lee Yan-Kong's Black Mask (1996), costarring Jet Li and Lau Ching-Wan.
Then, in the late 90s, Wong started what almost seems like a second career of playing cool cops and gangsters. For example, Beast Cops(1998).
In Johnny To's The Mission, Wong plays a Triad brother who comes out of retirement to protect his former boss. But it's the character, the acting and the style that make The Mission so satisfying.
In Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs (2002) (remade by Martin Scorsese as The Departed), the shocking death of his character, Inspector Wong, influenced a whole slew of filmmakers who added similar deaths to their movies.
Incidentally, Wong's co-star in Motorway, Shawn Yue, also appears in Infernal Affairs.
And Wong returned in Johnnie To's Exiled (2006)--nod to Sam Peckinpah's Westerns, allegory of the relationship between Wong's birthplace, Macau, and Mainland China--and sequel to The Mission in cast, if not in story. While it seems like just a fun action movie in the West, Exiled was banned in China for its implicit comparison of the Chinese government and a new gang moving in--I mean, given a Category III rating for Simon Yam's dapper Boss Feng making a gang sign while making an agreement to move in on new territory.
Wong also won best supporting actor at Taiwan's Golden Horse Film Awards for his work in Sylvia Chang's Princess D (2002) And he probably should've gotten an award for mentoring the young and dangerous racers of Initial D (2005).
Like almost all Hong Kong actors, Wong has a musical career. Unlike most, his music has often been moreexperimental and punk than standard CantoPop.
Soi Cheang (aka, Cheang Pou-Soi/Chang Po-Tsui) is a Hong Kong director, screenwriter and actor. Cheang's written four films and acted in forty, including Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai's Mad Detective (2007), PTU
(2003), and Raymond Yip Wai-Man's widely-beloved, Portland Street Blues (1998). He was the executive director for Triangle (2007), an ambitious "relay" film featuring one story and three directors, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark and
Johnnie To. And Cheang's directed fifteen films, but is probably best known in the West with his last three.
Dog Bite Dog (2006) can be rough-going, starring heart-throb and scandal-magnet Edison Chen as a Cambodian hitman with no name. It has some of the nihilistic brutality of Okamoto Kihachi's Sword of Doom, but with even the "good" guys only comparatively good and Edison Chen killing everyone in modern Hong Kong rather than Nakadai Tetsuya offing people in Edo-era Japan.
(Also, it has Lam Suet, an actor most recently associated with his work in Johnny To's production company, Milkway--The Mission (1999), Exiled (2006) and PTU--or as I like to call it, Run, Lam Suet, Run!).
Shamo (2007) is Cheang's adapation of an eponymous Hashimoto Izu manga. Shawn Yue plays a very different part than he does as the protagonist of Motorway. He's Narashima Ryo, a young man in detention for killing his parents. The ever-intense Francis Ng Chun-Yu is prison karate instructor, Kurokawa Kenji. Narashima goes on to become a prostitute and underground fighter. Take it as straight, take it as camp, Shamo is really style slathered on top of a compacted narrative that is as important to the movie as you want to make it. Also, the trailer really implies the cicadas tell Narashima to kill.
In Accident (2009), Louis Koo Lin-Tok plays Ho Kwok-Fai, a hitman who specializes in causing fatal accidents, not just making his hits look like one. When a member of his murderous organization makes a mistake, Ho suspects that he's being set up for an accident and not even Louis Koo's handsomeness or magnificent tan can save him from paranoia. Another Milkyway production. Also, Lam Suet!
Imagine this: It's Wednesday September 12th. You have tickets to the 9:00PM screening of Soi Cheang's Motorway at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, but you're starving. What are you possibly going to eat!? Luckily The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema is located right in the middle of the Annex, so the food options are plentiful.
This year your options are even broader as the Toronto International Film Festival is teaming up with Toronto Food Trucks to bring the food to you. A rotating selection of food trucks will be located outside of The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema September 7th to 16th from 7PM to midnight.
http://torontofoodtrucks.ca/photos
Toronto food truck locations and schedule during the festival can be found on the Toronto Food Trucks website, Twitter and Facebook pages.
The following Vanguard films will be playing at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema:
PUSHER
Fri., Sept. 7, 9:00 PM, THE BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
PAINLESS
Sat., Sept. 8, 6:00 PM, THE BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
ILL MANORS
Sun., Sept. 9, 9:00 PM, THE BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
Hong Kong action icon Anthony Wong persues an infamous getaway driver in this high-octane thriller from Soi Cheang, director of the 2009 Festival selection Accident, and legendary producer Johnnie To.
Below are the poster and trailer for Motorway, which plays the Toronto International Film Festival within the Vanguard programme.
Further information about Soi Cheang's Motorway can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the MotorwayIMDB page.
