The subjects of mental illness and homelessness are not sure fire hit makers and are in fact two topics that western society has no better answers for than the HK system presented here. The social workers who care for these people are usually overworked and way underpaid for the services they provide, receive little public support and have chronic funding issues. That seems to be a universal problem and one this movie attempts to attack head on. We follow the social worker tasked with taking care of people marginalized by society as he moves through his day, trying to help those people in his charge, even when they don't want help or don't understand that it is being given.

Tony Leung Chiu Wai is almost unrecognizable in a bookended performance as the homeless, childlike Doggie. Doggie hangs around a fish market, trying to connect with the people who frequent and work there. He is inarticulate and his moves to engage the fish market denizens create fear and panic.

Chow Yun Fat is memorable in small but heartrending role as Chung, the father of two who lives in the city dump and cares for his two small children, eking out a marginal existence, but doing his best to be a good father. When the social worker chances across him on a street corner, and is informed that he "has trouble" and tries to help, the social worker and a reporter who has attached herself to him to do an expose, follow Chung to the dump and his shack. There they find one of Chung's children deathly ill, the other missing. The denouement of this episode is wrenching and tragic.

The third mental paient is not homeless, but lives with his mother in her flat and seems to be rehabilitated when we first are introduced to him. But events in his life threaten his stability and he begins a downward spiral that ends in violent tragedy that affects everyone involved.

The film winds down to an equally tragic conclusion. Along the way it has shown the shortfall of the social system to care for the disenfranchised in a compelling way unusual for HK cinema. The statements it makes about the care these people receive are certainly not applicable to just Hong Kong--but the US and the rest of the Western world as well. It may not succeed at everything it attempts, but the film is certainly one that would never have been made in Hollywood and is to be commended for shining an unwavering light on the subject matter it has tackled.