Protege (2007) (DVD) (2023 Reprint) (Hong Kong Version) DVD Region 3

Andy Lau stars as Kwan, a successful businessman and family man who also happens to be Hong Kong's top drug lord. However, the years have taken their toll on Kwan; he suffers from diabetes and is looking to retire. But he's just appointed a successor: Nick (Daniel Wu), who has managed Kwan's drug handlers for years with expert efficiency. It looks like a good move, as Nick seems more intelligent and able than Kwan's other partners. Unfortunately, Kwan is a lousy judge of character: Nick is really a cop, having spent seven years undercover to ferret out Kwan's heroin operation. Progress has been slow; Nick doesn't know where the drugs come from, or where they're made, and Kwan is reluctant to show anyone. But Nick's appointment to Kwan's heir comes with a full initiation into the drug lord's empire, from the laboratory all the way back to their source in the Golden Triangle. With each step, Nick comes closer to finishing his undercover assignment and putting Kwan and his operation out of commission. However, each step also brings Nick closer to betraying a man whose trust he's earned. Where do Nick's loyalties truly lie, and will he find the guts to put away Kwan once and for all?

Protégé proffers an expected complexity with its iconic "undercover cop with divided loyalties" plotline, but the film eschews Hard Boiled/Infernal Affairs riffs for something that sounds less exciting: education on the local drug trade, with a gray-haired Andy Lau as the tour guide. Once Nick is tapped to succeed Kwan, he gets the full-on tour, first checking out the local "kitchen", where they cook the goods, plus he meets the warehouse manager, and finally visits the poppy fields in Thailand where the stuff is originally grown. Throughout this process, we get a constant educational earful, which includes info on how they cut the merchandise, how they move it, how the business is doing (heroin is down, but Ecstasy is up) - basically the complete picture on running your own successful drug empire. According to Kwan, the trick is strict separation of tasks. Manufacturing, storage, and delivery are handled separately, and the three should never meet. Security is one reason for this setup, but another is it makes the business into what it is: a business. As Kwan notes in an acidic monologue, the drug trade is just a business to him, and the consequences (addiction, crime, degradation, dead people) are not his problem.

But it is Nick's problem - or, he chooses to make it such. Protégé begins at the end of its narrative, with a post-undercover Nick ruminating on why people take drugs in the first place. The film does deliver an answer to Nick's existential query, though it's rather compact and could easily be the tagline for a 12-step course on beating addiction. The film's exploration of its topic is rich and affecting, however. Aside from hanging around with Kwan, Nick also chances into a relationship with Fan (Zhang Jingchu of Seven Swords), a single mother whose heroin addiction threatens to consume her. Nick at first abhors her drug addiction, spurning her when she's most desperate, but soon he tries to understand and even care for her. The experience puts his relationship with Kwan in question. Despite his lingering respect for his (crime)boss, can Nick forgive Kwan for his complicity in Fan's troubles? Protégé gets more mileage out of this conflict - Nick the witness to addiction vs. Nick the fledgling drug lord - than the undercover cop/criminal duality that one may expect after reading the film's synopsis. The two plotlines also comprise both ends of the drug trade - the dealer and the addict - giving audiences a panoramic view of the film's sometimes overemphasized anti-drug message. Yes, we get that drugs are bad. Do the filmmakers have to remind us so often?

Maybe not, but given the film's transparent aims, it seems that they want to. Protégé's themes are rather commonplace and even trite, and the underdeveloped and sometimes mishandled characters only add to the potential for a public service announcement overdose. Nick is remarkably naive for a cop who's been undercover for seven years, and seems to express his tortured existence in an external, rather than internal manner. Given his frequent reactions of shock or disapproval, one wonders how he was able to ingratiate himself so far into Kwan's circle of trust without drawing extra suspicion. Kwan is also problematic; the character possesses a believable humanity, and his ruthlessness and denial is something Andy Lau effectively conveys. However, the film neglects to fill in one blank in its exploration of the Hong Kong drug trade: how does a smart family man like Kwan get involved in such a horrifying, morally bankrupt biz? Given how much we learn about the ins and outs of the whole drug trade, that nugget of info seems to be a missing piece.

Louis Koo's character is also a misstep. The Tanned One plays Fan's loathsome husband, who supposedly spread his heroin addiction to her. Koo strains valiantly in the role, dirtying his looks and even wearing a set of false teeth to appear less handsome than his usual dashing screen image. However, the character never develops beyond a caricature of a drug addict, and Koo's jittery overacting sometimes elicits laughs. If the point of the character was simply to cast an actor against type, then the filmmakers succeeded, but otherwise the character is handled poorly - especially when it comes time to decide his fate. The filmmakers step outside of reality and deliver a coda to the character that may please justice-seeking audiences, but it also feels inherently false. At times Protégé doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Is it an uncompromising drama? A cop-criminal thriller complete with crowd-pleasing justice? Ironic commentary on the ineffectiveness of law enforcement? Or an existential exploration of man's emptiness, which the film suggests causes and enables substance abuse? There's a lot going on in Protégé, and it doesn't all tie together neatly.

But Derek Yee is at the helm of this film, and that can only be a good thing. Though the screenplay sometimes seems unfocused, Yee ties things together with compelling cinematic finesse. Yee changes up his technique frequently, sometimes going for edgy and stylish, and other times using subtle details to foreshadow later horrors. The content is really nothing new, but that's fine. Derek Yee has never been a filmmaker to offer new themes or unique characters, but his handling of generic material may be stronger than any Hong Kong director currently working. Films like 2 Young and Lost in Time succeeded in large part due to their copious detail on everyday life. Protégé isn't about everyday life, but the details it offers on the drug trade are eminently interesting. Nick's initiation into Kwan's world feels fascinating and complete, the didactic portions of the film managing to involve and entertain as much as they educate. Derek Yee has a knack for making explanation into entertainment, but he doesn't forget to deliver the occasional knockout blow. During one harrowing sequence, Nick is cornered by customs cops (led by an overacting, but very effective Liu Kai-Chi), and must either help the rival cops or his undercover drug-trading brethren. The subsequent raid on the "kitchen" is amazingly intense, mixing black comedy and surprising violence into a harrowing and hyperemotional sequence that affects long after the film ends.

The scenes detailing Fan's addiction are equally powerful, mostly due to Zhang Jingchu's raw, compelling performance. The actress throws herself into the part with abandon, and is a lock to be remembered a year from now when end-of-the year awards come around. Despite some problems with their characters, both Daniel Wu and Andy Lau are exceptionally effective, as is the long-missed Anita Yuen, who turns up in a small role as Kwan's wife. Louis Koo breaks type effectively, though the problems with his character are perhaps the film's largest fault. Protégé possesses compelling detail and an exemplary production, but it seems to fall slightly short of the high expectations one now equates with a Derek Yee film. Protégé is not as satisfying as One Nite in Mongkok, nor is it as emotionally resonant as Lost in Time or C'est La Vie, Mon Cheri. But Protégé is enormously entertaining and even powerful, delivering a compelling cinema experience that packs an immediate and unexpected punch. As soon as Protégé ends, it seems something important and worthwhile happened. That feeling may not last, and further scrutiny of the film reveals more holes than any Hong Kong Cinema fan would probably like to admit. Sorry to say, the film does have flaws, and they ultimately prevent the film from achieving the instant classic status its pedigree (director Derek Yee and producer Peter Chan) would seem to offer. Still, even if it doesn't match those lofty expecations, the ride is more than worth it.

by Kozo - LoveHKFilm.com

The boss of a major drug-running operation in Hong Kong, Lin Quin (Andy Lau) is suffering from failing health due to diabetes and kidney trouble and is looking for a successor to run the business. He has adopted Nick (Daniel Wu) as his protégé, the young man in charge of organising the transporting of the heroin blocks manufactured at "the kitchen". Quin is hoping even to bring him into the family as a potential husband for his sister-in-law. Nick shows great promise, keen to learn the business and start making some serious money for himself, but unknown to Quin, the reason for Nick's curiosity is that he is a cop, working deep undercover for the Narcotics Bureau.

Having spent seven years working to gain the trust of the underworld gangs, Nick is close to breaking the operation, but in order to bring down the whole network he needs to find the source of Quin's supplies. Quin is not a man to take risks, but Nick manages to convince him that cutting out the middle men and taking him direct to their sources involves less chance of things going wrong and could prove more lucrative from them - but Nick finds there is a serious human cost to their actions.

While the majority of the attention and film awards for the stylish reinvention type of Hong Kong crime thriller in recent years have understandably and deservedly been given to the likes of Johnnie To for Election and Andrew Lau/Alan Mak for Infernal Affairs and Confession of Pain, Derek Yee has quietly been building a solid reputation - barring the misstep of Drink, Drank, Drunk - with impressive material of the likes of One Nite In Mongkok and 2 Young. His approach in Protégé is likewise pleasantly unencumbered by the conventions of the genre, the film having little in the way of action scenes for a good part of the first hour of the film, presenting instead a strong, rounded dramatic situation. With equal attention given to the difficulties faced by Nick's heroin-addicted neighbour Fan (Zhang Jingchu) and her abusive husband (Louis Koo), the film presents a multifaceted look at the ins and outs of the drug industry and the highs and lows of drug usage, realistically, unsparingly and unglamorously - there are few good guys to be found anywhere in this film. It's not documentary realism by any means, but it is certainly far removed from the traditional treatment more commonly seen in Hong Kong action/crime films, and is as bleak and comprehensive on the evils of the drug industry as Soderbergh's Traffic, but without the moralistic finger-wagging.

Yee's solid direction is mirrored in the performances of his cast, the director returning to Daniel Wu for the lead role and - as he demonstrated in The Banquet - the young actor is shaping up very nicely as a quite convincing action star and romantic lead. He remains difficult to read and doesn't show a wide-ranging ability - his facial expressions never varying much beyond earnest intensity - but little more than this is required for the role of Nick. Andy Lau is well used to this kind of material, but even here the director seems to have mainly reigned in any generic overplaying in his role of a gangland boss. As Fan, Zhang Jingchu (Seven Swords) brings more than just a love interest aspect to the film, and as the mother of a young child, fully conveys the horrifying nature of her addiction much more convincingly than Louis Koo's twitchy mannerisms. Collectively however, the characters and their fates are chillingly depicted on the screen towards an appropriately consistent, but almost unbearably downbeat ending.

DVD
Protégé is released on DVD in Hong Kong by Deltamac. It is released as a two-disc set, the film presented on a dual-layer disc, the extras on a separate single-layer disc. The set is in NTSC format and is encoded for Region 3.

Video
Deltamac present the film with a beautiful transfer to DVD, one that is almost flawless with nothing in the way of analogue marks or digital artefacts. The image is remarkably clear, with good definition showing even in wider shots in interiors. Colour tones are excellent and the image remains stable throughout, with only a little flicker in some cross-lighting and the usual flatness of blacks and lack of shadow detail in.

Audio
There are three mixes of the soundtrack here which essentially boil down impressive, outstanding and dub. The Dolby Digital 6.1EX is strong and dynamic making good use of the whole surround speaker range, but the DTS-ES mix is positively thundering on a deeper, warmer register. Often in cases like this, the actual direct-recorded dialogue is often the weakest element in the mix, and although it does sound a little bit weak in one or two places, in the main it is strong and clear enough to not be swamped by the music score and deep LFE rumblings when the action sequences kick in. The voices are much clearer in the Mandarin Dolby Digital 5.1 dub, but this is not going to be the mix of choice for most people here.

Subtitles
Optional English subtitles are included in a clear white font, that is slightly on the smaller side. The titles remain mostly outside the image frame in the black border, except when they stretch to two lines. The translation is mostly good. There are a few peculiarities of grammar and sense earlier in the film, but either these improve as the film goes on or I failed to notice them as much.

Extras
All the extra features are all on the second disc and all have English subtitles; however, they amount to nothing more than the standard Electronic Press Kit features. The Teaser (1:22) makes no bones about the dark treatment of drugs in the film, and while the Trailer (2:33) is a little more conventional, it is intense and hard-hitting also. The admirable lack of a moralistic preaching tone in the actual film is unfortunately counteracted by the EPK Making Of: Hong Kong Version (15:15), the director and cast at pains to convey that the film regards drugs as evil and that the intention is to educate as well as be dramatic. Some behind-the-scenes filming shows scenes that do not appear in the final film and are sadly not included in the extra features. A Short version (4:54) of the making of is much more palatable, focussing on the cast, locations and shooting. The Star Interviews (4:24) feature the same soundbite snippets with all the actors that are used in the Making Of, with little additional material other than a 44 second chat with Anita Yuen. About Drugs (3:03), uses the rest of their interview material where they discuss the use of drugs in the film. Nothing new here either. The features are rounded out with a Photo Gallery (6:00), arranged by actor, giving you the opportunity to hear pieces from the music score.

Overall
Another strong feature from Derek Yee, Protégé manages to sidestep the kind of conventions you would expect from a genre thriller about an undercover cop trying to break a major drug ring, in favour of an intense, dramatic and wide-ranging treatment of all aspects of the business. As well as being no doubt authentic in its graphic depictions of the social consequences of drug usage, the film also feels accurate in its psychology and its downbeat tone - and, by god, it gets pretty bleak here. Although the extra features are quite weak, Deltamac's presentation of the film is excellent with a strong image and thundering sound mixes.

by Noel Megahey - DVD Times