this is not a gangster flick...more like a thriller to me.

source : http://star-ecentral.com/movies/reviews/re...1392&sec=Movies

The power of three

By S.B. TOH

Triangle

Rating(out of 5): NR

(Golden Screen Cinemas)

Starring: Kelly Lin, Simon Yam, Louis Koo, Lam Ka Tung, Sun Hong Lei, Lam Suet

One movie, a single story, three directors, some half a dozen screenwriters - sounds like something Quentin Tarantino might cook up, and a recipe for a turkey, doesn't it?
Yep.

The very notion of it sounds like a bad idea, and you expect the movie to fail, and fail badly. But Triangle is, in fact, quite brilliant.

Having too many cooks doesn't always spoil the broth. You expect it to crash and burn, but see how the movie takes flight. See how it soars, swoops, and manically wings the story in an improvisatory act that is giddy to watch.

A unique collaboration that brings together three iconic Hong Kong filmmakers, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam and Johnnie To, this movie - about three desperate men, a box of treasure, an unfaithful wife, her rogue cop lover, and the gangsters they all end up tangling with - has a chameleonic, almost schizophrenic quality to it.

It goes through mood swings, plot twists, and changes in pace like the trinity that it really is.

Brooding, it paces nervously, pauses, breaks into a trot; steeled, it gathers momentum, hurtles, and veers; seething, it screeches to a halt, explodes and - what do you know? - does a pirouette.

It is often surprising, it is unpredictable, but the story holds together pretty well and is never scatter-brained despite the ad-hoc approach and mercurial quality.

The movie is riveting to watch, from start to finish.

It is often said that art cannot be made via committee, but there is always an exception to everything in life, and Triangle is certainly exceptional. The modus operandi of the filmmakers is to do what they call "a serial", in which one person picks up where the other leaves off.

How the story begins, how it develops, and how it ends was not discussed.

Comments Tsui Hark, who directed the first act, "It was agreed we mustn't interfere with the other's creative ideas or narratives. Each director had absolute control over what he wanted to do. Hopefully our joint efforts would result in an exciting and entertaining film."

It does.

And more than that, Triangle is edgy and surprisingly dark - something HK films don't usually do very well, even when bathed in blood - psychological drama not being a forte.

But in this film, there are times when the bleakness and despair seems almost overwhelming, particularly in Ringo Lam's middle segment, which focuses on the marital discord of Simon Yam's timid character as he is forced to confront his wife's infidelity and murderous intents.

Perhaps it is just pure luck, a one-off thing, a happy chance but Triangle seems to have benefited from the best qualities of its three filmmakers - Tsui Hark's vision and attention to detail, Lam's dark impulse and nihilistic tendencies, and To's sublime gift for transmuting motion with emotion, as well as his fine sense of irony.

The story begins in a dimly lit bar - two men talking in a hushed tone. Something about a jewellery shop and a getaway car. Another friend observes them from a nearby table. Something is brewing, something with a bad whiff to it.

Fai (Louis Koo) is trying to persuade taxi driver Sam (Simon Yam) to join in a heist. Sam is jittery about the whole thing. His other friend Mok (Sun Hung Lei) tells him it's a bad idea whatever it may be.

As the three men argue, a stranger interrupts them.

The old man hands them a piece of gold and reveals clues that could lead them to more. The heist is forgotten. Over the next few days, as they piece the clues together, the men lock in on the location of what they hope is a box full of treasure.

But even before they retrieve it, things are already beginning to spin out of control: Sam's wife and her lover are plotting his downfall; Fai's robber friends are breathing down his neck; also, there seems to be more to Fai than he makes out.

When they get their hands on the box, the sh*t hits the fan. The three friends find themselves in over their head as Murphy's Law kicks in and everything that could possibly go wrong, does. Greed, suspicion, lust, jealousy, revenge, double-dealing, the serendipity of fate - it all bubbles to the surface as we are taken on a veritable roller-coaster ride to the very end.

The almost wordless climax in a dinky little jetty beside a patch of tall grassland is classic Johnnie To - tense, still, and, suddenly, full of bodies in frantic motion.

Triangle is terrific stuff, a three-in-one offer you just can't afford to miss out on.

some may like it, some may not.....

This post has been edited by wiNd: Oct 22 2007, 09:11 PM