Gangs
Dir: Lawrence Ah Mon
Scr: Chan Man-keung
Prod Co: Sil-Metropole
Cast: Ricky Ho, Wong Chung-cheun, Ma Hin-ting, Eleven Leung
1988 / Colour / D Beta / Cantonese / Chi & Eng subtitles / 97min
Scr: Chan Man-keung
Prod Co: Sil-Metropole
Cast: Ricky Ho, Wong Chung-cheun, Ma Hin-ting, Eleven Leung
1988 / Colour / D Beta / Cantonese / Chi & Eng subtitles / 97min
Composed yet intense, measured yet impassioned, reservedly yet beautifully wrought – Lawrence Ah Mon's directorial debut, probes, documentary-style, the tragic fate of youth delinquents exposed to the brutality of the gangster world. An unflinching stab at reality, Chan Man-keung's screenplay paints a lucid picture of the underworld, orbited by Big K and his satellite of ‘associates' who are on the bottom rung of the triad society and sacrificial lambs to be toyed with. While First Wave director Tsui Hark's cult classic,
Dangerous Encounters - 1st Kind
(1980), is a lurid exercise in nihilistic violence,
Gangs
is a social cauldron with a wealth of details woven into the narrative in a more subdued vein. Ah Mon proves to be blessed with a knack for extruding uncontrived performances from non-actors. In particular, Big K's momentary episodes of doubt and defiance make him one of Hong Kong cinema's most memorable specimens of human frailty.