Return To Dark VCD

A Hong Kong remake of Japan's Gonin (1995), Return to Dark trades in Takashi Ishii's "any which way but straight" perversity for a fistful of action movie riffs. Deep-dyed in toxic blues and reds and filmed at cockeyed Dutch angles, if you can put Gonin, out of your mind Return succeeds on its own merits: a straight-up cheapie action movie with a residue of Japanese snazz. The Japanese influence on Hong Kong movies was bound to end this way with all-out appropriation and it's interesting that what the director chose to loose were the gay relationships in Gonin. But Hong Kong may not be ready for dueling gay couples on opposite sides of a bag of money, smoking hogleg pistols in hand (although Clarence Fok's Cheap Killers suggests otherwise).

Brick, Mo, Blondie and Anthony break into the triad headquarters and get an unexpected bonus when they find millions in the safe instead of the expected thousands. In their giddiness they forget all the rules of robbery (don't quit your job, don't flash the cash, and never brag about it) and bring down the wrath of triad enforcers, Blackie Ko and Joey Meng, two peroxide blonde lovebirds. Ko is playing the Takeshi Kitano role from Gonin and acts circles around everyone else in the movie, managing to find his act of impersonation liberating rather than stifling (as Anthony Wong seems to). He and Joey Meng are a cute homicidal hit-couple, although their sadistic relationship from Gonin has been replaced by bathing in red wine. Despite her tendency to collect sticks and sea shells and make them into picture frames (see Star Bio), Meng is effectively cold blooded as Ko's fashion plate bullet buddy.

In a neat joke on its probable fate, the pic ends in a movie theatre showing the crampingly bad Michael Wong/Kathy Chau vehicle,A Game of No Rule. There're five people in the audience and none of them notice the bullets, the blood or the bodies all around them.

by Grady Hendrix