The heist goes fine until they plan to escape, Wah is getting tailed by the cops. The only way he can get them off his back is by taking a young woman, Jo Jo (Jacqueline Wu) hostage. Trumpet orders Wah to kill off Jo Jo incase she talks the cops, but Wah doesn't have the heart to do it and lets her go, promising her that mustn't tell the police.

A relationship grows between Wah and Jo Jo. Trumpet finds out that Wah had let her go and begins to plot against the Wah and his triad brothers...

Review: Yes its the traditional 'Good girls falls for the Bad Boy' story. With Andy Lau and Jacqueline Wu leading this movie couldn't help becoming a instant classic.

A side story with Stephen Chow regular - Ng Man-Tat as another lackey who spends his days washing cars and topping up parking meters. Who finds himself in trouble when a group of youthful punks try to take over his territory.

Acting? Andy Lau is great, never flawless. The scenes where he attacks the gang who bullied Ng Man-Tat is excellent. The scenes where he confronts Tommy Wong are also memorable. Jacqueline Wu's character is also decent where she has to deal with her parents forcing her to move to Canada, keeping her away with Wah.

Final Thoughts possibly the best movie in 1990 a must own for all Andy Lau fans.

Highlights

There are different ways to approach a project which has a familiar story like this one. You can take no chances and make a simple take on it without no surprises. Or do what Benny Chan did with A Moment Of Romance, inject a subtle depth combined with some really solid writing and performances. With James Yuen's script backing him up, Benny shows us an already very mature and style free directing, something which surprised me considering it was his directing debut. Benny has then gone on to directing more shallow (yet entertaining) movies like Gen-X Cops and if that is a bad career choice I can not say but A Moment Of Romance showed off great character drama skills.

He lets the technical side of filmmaking breath just a litte, which suits this human story more. There's only a few moments where for example slow motion is used but it's employed pretty much just right and does what slow motion should do, emphasize the moment. Some young directors don't know how and when this should be used but Benny has probably looked at some other directors who are skilled in that department and therefore pulling it off in his own movie. Other than that he concentrates on telling the story right and clear and even if the running time isn't very long, there weren't many moments that dragged. The movie offers a varied gallery of characters that are all given an opportunity to shine at some point in the movie. Everyone from main to supporting characters are important and that as well as mixing the two genres of romance and triad is done with great skill by the filmmakers.

If you could describe A Moment Of Romance as a still picture, I would say it's a dark and grim one which will stay with you for a little while. The movie is quite gory and violent, something that is enchanced so much more when it is someone we care about that is on the receiving end. Ace director Ringo Lam was one of the producers (and also Wong Jing!) and the violence presented is sort of similar to to grittiness present in some of Ringo's movies so maybe he influenced Benny and the production a bit (in a good way).

Cinematographers Horace and Joe Chan also play a huge part in painting the picture that is A Moment Of Romance. Another movie to compare the look of this one with i think is Riley Yip's Metade Fumaca, in other words we get a fairly natural lightning scheme with only the beautiful neon lights of Hong Kong creating natural atmosphere. Horace and Joe's work should be mentioned since in the movie we don't notice it very much. It's the story we care about and not primarily the way scenes are shot. That is in my opinion when cinematography is at it's best.

Law Tai-Yau's nominated score is a bit on the sentimental side but would've worked worse if the images it was scored too were corny and too sentimental. That doesn't happen and dark music passages and well inserted canto pop songs (some probably sung by Andy) makes this a nice music experience as well. For some reason I was reminded about the score structure and the songs used in All About Ah Long when I listened to A Moment Of Romance. They semmed eerily similar but you could 'steal' from worse movies than that one.

Andy Lau has been in a lot of movies and it's no wonder I keep bumping into him in these reviews. As mentioned in other reviews, I think Andy acts the best when he has a more subdued and maybe dark character to play and he has on a number ocassions proven that he can do good work with a well written and fleshed out character. The character of Wah Dee is probably one of his strongest performances even to this date. Wah Dee is a fairly complex guy but also some interesting traits come out when he's with Jojo. We as an audience don't really know how much he does or is going to care to care about Jojo and he comes across as very cold in a few scenes, which is probably due to him not knowing himself what he feels. Andy really makes this role his own and all the different sides of Wah Dee like his romantic and tough one comes across nicely in Andy's performance.

Wu Chien-Lin made her movie debut with this role and what an impression she made! She really looks the part of Jojo who's trapped rich parents girl but she is also a little bit mysterious to the audience because it's never really stated exactly why she is drawn to Wah Dee. Is it because he indeed is a triad or because she sees something in him that could be improved upon? That this is not made clear works for us for the most part and we can put all the pieces together in the end but I do feel that in some scenes and moments a little bit more writing was needed for her character. Not the most layered role ever in a movie but for a debutant Wu Chien-Lin really impresses.

The star of this movie is Andy Lau but the strongest performance comes from Stephen Chow-regular Ng Man Tat (from Shaolin Soccer). His very out there underdog character can at first be seen as a painfully bad attempt to have comedy in this serious film. During the course of the film though he still acts very wild but there's more sadness apparent in him. All in all Ng Man Tat very convincingly embodies this character. Although not the same role but in Portland Street Blues he played a similar underdog character.

A Moment Of Romance is a very well executed piece that to me is essential viewing for those of us exploring other genres than just action. I hope Benny Chan at some point will re-visit this kind of filmmaking since he showed here the depths he has as one.

At any rate, Andy Lau fans will eat this movie up. It's one of his better performances (even though Ng Man-Tat, as usual, manages to outshine the main star) and the soundtrack is heavy with some of his Cantopop songs. Even most people (myself included) who usually aren't Andy Lau fans will enjoy this movie.