Already stretched to breaking in a loyalty tug of war between Triad bosses and his loose cannon partner, Wah (Andy Lau - FULLTIME KILLER, DAYS OF BEING WILD), a rising star in the HK underworld, finds himself saddled with beautiful, ailing country cousin Ngor. As an escalating test of wills with a stubborn debtor explodes into bloodshed and a mob turncoat instigates a ruthless police crackdown, Wah’s growing fascination with Ngor becomes his last chance for escape from a violent past and a dubious future.

Cast in comic eye candy roles prior to AS TEARS GO BY, Maggie Cheung (IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) cites Ngor, her first of many collaborations with Wong Kar-Wai, as the character that truly began her dramatic career. Under Wong Kar-Wai’s direction, Jacky Cheung (DAYS OF BEING WILD) earned the 1988 Hong Kong Film Awards Best Actor Award for his portrayal of Wah’s guilt-ridden, out of control partner Fly. Balancing epiphanous imagery with experimentation and realism with brazen romanticism, Wong Kar-Wai’s AS TEARS GO BY offers a tantalizing glimpse into the nascent brilliance of one of the most influential filmmaking talents of the last twenty years.

THE FILM
Ostensibly As Tears Go By takes the Mean Streets blueprint, an older, gaining sensibility gangster looking out for a reckless and wild younger cohort, and turns the idea into a character study of low level Chinese gangsters and the pressures of being on the bottom rung in the criminal underworld. So, although both roughly share the same premise, they each reflect their own distinct culture- Mean Streets is very New York, As Tears Go By is very Chinese. And, like Scorsese’s film, Wong Kar Wai’s debut shows all the signs of a new director with style, flair, and vision. While many Chinese gangster films are usually pretty romantic about the underworld lifestyle , like A Better Tomorrow, As Tears Go By takes a more squalid, dirty, realistic approach.

Wong Kar Wai is one of the few directors whose expressive style does not overwhelm the actors. In his best films, like In the Mood for Love, Happy Together and Chunking Express, as explosively slick, dreamy, stylish, or frenetic as Wong’s camera work is, his actors are equally explosive internally with their emotions, and Wong usually keeps his actors comfortable in their characters skin. While this debut is not quite as effective and Wong had not developed his trademark ambiguous plotting and internal monologue that would help define his style an further enhance his characters, one can still see the balance. Witness the loose camerawork and neo-noir lighting of such sequences as Wah stumbling home drunk, or Fly frantically tying to escape some thugs he blatantly cheats in billiards, running through the pool hall and out into the crowded streets. As the ashamed “I don’t want to be nobody” little bother, Jacky Cheung does have some moments that are rather hammy, but Lau provides a calm and cool surface to counter Cheung’s scene chewing. Maggie Cheung has a somewhat thankless role- “the girl”. Despite the secondary nature of it, one does feel they know her character, and Maggie has always said that it was with this film that she actually learned what acting was.

Its not exactly a masterpiece (as many HK aficionados taut it), but it is an assured debut and a great sign of the things to come. There was an intense amount of speculation and hype even before the film was released, and Wong Kar Wai has proven to be one of HK’s most buzzworthy filmmakers. Certainly, I doubt many filmgoers can make it to the final moments without being emotionally invested and affected by the characters fates. Unfortunately one of the films drawbacks is that its score dates the film, effectively ruining any timelessness, and proving to be, for me, a distraction. The largely synth score is very 80’s, feeling as if it were plucked from a Miami Vice episode. Likewise it doesn’t help that a key song, played during Andy and Maggies revelation that they desire each other is none other than a Cantonese version of that overplayed 80’s classic “Take My Breathe Away”.

THE DVD
Media Asia. It's another in a long line of mediocre but acceptable HK film transfers. Picture- Anamorphic Widescreen (16 x 9 enhanced). Overall is a pretty average HK film transfer, not exactly jaw dropping, room for improvement, but fine for those who already have vast HK import libraries. There are some artifacts, spots of washed out, softer and grainier scenes, lessening the details. Color and contrast are good, and overall the film has good sharpness. Sound-Dolby Digital 5.1 Cantonese. Aside from the glaringly Phil Collins sounding soundtrack the audio mix is pretty good, clear, not extremely impressive, but free of any distortions. Optional, English, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian, Japanese, or Indonesian subs. The subtitle translation, on the other hand, is one of the worst I have seen. Its one thing to get rampant sub flaws on a lighthearted, mindless entertainment piece like Peacock King, but on a drama like As Tears go By it really hinders the film. Nearly every sentence is muddled or misspelled English. “If he is working for another, he have already died.”...”High, what a coincident.” It is really the only detriment that keeps me from instantly recommending everyone see this film (or this version). Those used to the world of awkward HK subtitling will probably be able to look past it, but those who hate subs or sub flaws will despise this disc. Extras- 9 Chapters--- Film synopsis and Cast Bios--Trailer for the film and Days of Being Wild.

CONCLUSION
While decent enough for die-hard fans, a more extra laced edition would be nice, so would a better picture, and so forth. Criterion, where are you? Mostly it is just, okay, with the horrible sub translation being a big sore spot consumers will want to consider before buying.

And that's about it. Like most of Wong's films, this one has a pretty slim plot to it. However, unlike most of Wong's later work, this movie is pretty linear. There are no convoluted inner monologues or circular story lines. And the filming techniques, while having some of the stylistic touches of later films, are not as dense as his others. As such, this might come off to "Wong lite" to his die-hard fans, but I still enjoyed the movie. The characters seem to be a little under-developed and the film loses steam during the romantic bits (both probably due to Wong's "flying paper" style), but I found the core story (the Triad drama) to be quite compelling.

Unlike many over-glamorized gangster movies like Triads: The Inside Story, you really (I assume) get a sense of what it is like to be a small potato in the Triad world. Disputes are not settled in mansions with people wielding two guns, they are settled in dank alleys with baseball bats. You don't use a Benz to get around, you use the bus. This dark worldview had me interested, even when the movie drifted away to the slightly hammy romantic parts (like some of his other movies, Wong tends to overuse musical pieces, in this case a Cantonese version of "Take My Breath Away"). And Andy Lau seemed pretty cool in this movie. I'm not normally a fan of his work, but his minimalist (some say lazy, but I will be nice in this review) style works for the most part, and makes a nice counterpoint to Jacky Cheung's more manic acting.

As Tears Go By might be too quirky for some (or not enough for die-hard Wong fans), but overall, this is a pretty interesting and stylish Triad movie that's worth checking out.