"Running Out of Time" starring Andy Lau

07.21 - Posted by Editor

Andy Lau in the great, goofy bus scene from "Running Out of Time"

AAIFF 2000 opens with Andy Lau's "Running Out of Time"   Review by Greg Pak

7.21.00 -- Asian CineVision opened its 23rd Asian American International Film Festival tonight in Manhattan with a sold out screening of Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau's film "Running Out of Time." Links AAIFF 2000   Official AAIFF 2000 press release   Official AAIFF 2000 Andy Lau press release       Lau, looking sharp in a black Chinese jacket and goatee and flanked by tatooed bodyguards in black T-shirts, appeared in person to introduce the film and sign autographs for hundreds of his fans afterwards.     At a press conference earlier in the day, Lau flexed his servicable English to discuss his happiness to be in New York for his first American film festival appearance and express his hopes of finding a project for his American film debut.   "Running Out of Time" Review   Following the Hong Kong action pic tradition of intense male bonding between cops and criminals, "Running Out of Time" features a reckless police negotiator (Lau Ching Wan) hunting down -- and then forming a wary partnership with -- a brooding criminal antihero (Andy Lau).     The convoluted plot follows Wah, a jewel thief with terminal cancer (and, you guessed it, a heart of gold), as he pulls off one last heist in the final 72 hours of his life. The level of action is closer to "The Thomas Crowne Affair" than "The Killer," with only limited gunplay but plenty of entertaining twists and turns as our antihero executes his plan.     Director Johnnie To does a nice job of leavening the Hong Kong style sentimentality of the pic with some well-placed laughs -- there's a great moment in which a panicking SWAT team cop continues to flail in ineffectual self-defense even after Wan stops punching him and another nicely played scene in which a callow bank employee struggles over whether or not to keep the wads of cash he's inadvertantly received during the heist.     But the first third of the picture drags somewhat -- there's plenty of energetic plot twists, but we know too little about Wah to have an emotional stake in what happens to him.     The film finally gets a toehold emotionally through a series of recurring vignettes between Wah and a woman on a bus. On the run after his big heist, Wah finds himself on a bus being stopped by the police. He slides into the seat next to a young woman (beautiful, of course), who notices the gun in his shirt and freezes. Wan gently slips his sunglasses onto her face, removes one of her earphones, and slides it over his own ear. As the romantic music the two of them are listening to fills the air, Wan tells her to lean on his shoulder. Since he's the deeply charming Andy Lau, she does. The cops enter the bus, take them for just a couple of innocent lovers, and leave.     It's a quirky, endearing scene which could have seemed creepy and coercive with different actors or direction, but plays beautifully with Lau and To. And the way the moment recurs and pays off later in the movie has just the right mix of movie-magic implausibility, goofball sentimentality, and honest emotional truth.     Meanwhile, the relationship between the cop and the criminal continues to develop through a series of implausible but entertaining set pieces, several of which give Lau the chance to appear, Mission-Impossible-style, in various rubber mask guises (which may have something to do with his taking home the Best Actor nod from this year's Hong Kong Film Awards).     Critical viewers might get weary of some of the film's cliched cinematic shorthand -- the tragic-and-fatally-diseased-anti-hero-coughing-up-blood scenes, for example, may strike some sophisticates as a little too luridly sentimental. But that's all part of the joy of this kind of flick. In short, for HK film afficionados desperate for something decent to watch now that Chow Yun Fat and Jet Li have flown the coop, "Running Out of Time" is a pretty great find.     My only big disappointment comes from a few borderline homophobic gags -- it's never too endearing to see characters we're supposed to like spouting words like "fag," even when they're subtitled.   Comments Post a comment Name: Email Address: URL: Comments: Remember info?