Run and Kill 乌鼠机密档案

When spineless businessman Cheung (Kent Cheng) comes home earlier than usual, he finds his wife in bed with another man — but instead of giving them both a proper thrashing, he walks out and gets drunk in the European quarter of the city. In his drunken stupor he meets a middleman for a Vietnamese gang and hires him to kill his unfaithful wife, then naturally forgets the whole thing by morning. He remembers nothing either when two hitmen break into his apartment and kill not only Cheung's wife but also her lover, so he candidly tells a police inspector (Danny Lee) every detail of the attackers' appearance. The leader of the Vietnamese gang (Johnny Wang), stunned by such audacity, puts Cheung "on the meter," but Cheung makes yet another foolish move — he turns to a gang of mainland Chinese for help. In a brawl at the cinema where the meeting was set, the brother of the Chinese gang's leader (Simon Yam) is killed, and the enraged psychopath declares a hunt not only for Cheung but for every surviving member of his family.

Impressions: The film's title alone makes it clear that we're in for something far from pleasant, and by and large the picture lives up to its name — it wasn't given a Category III rating for nothing. There isn't much blood on screen (nothing you wouldn't see in your average action film), and there's no nudity at all, but the ferocious energy and ruthless cynicism of the filmmakers, who spare neither the elderly nor children, have quite earned their work that "third category."

The film begins in a thoroughly peaceable manner, and unsuspecting viewers might even think they've stumbled onto a comedy about the misadventures of a spineless businessman. But as Cheung sinks deeper and deeper into the mess he's cooked up himself, the picture inexorably takes on blood-red hues. The humor never disappears from the film, but the closer it gets to the finale, the blacker and more absurd it becomes — the entire ending, with its brutal showdown between the virtually invulnerable Simon Yam and the utterly feral Kent Cheng, who has lost everything, can, if you're so inclined, be taken as some kind of perverse, pathologically deranged comedy.

It should be noted that Run and Kill is genuinely gripping to watch — not least thanks to a cunningly twisted script free of lulls and marking time. Nothing but action, nothing but new events piling up on top of one another in uneven layers. On the whole, the direction could certainly have used more "polish" (the pacing, while fast, is uneven in places), but it's functional enough to hold your attention throughout all ninety-odd minutes. The actors do no less. Kent Cheng is utterly convincing both as a spineless cuckold and as an enraged bulldozer sweeping away every obstacle in his path, and Simon Yam, though he overacts beyond all measure, is likewise supremely effective. Children are best kept away from this film (all the more so since the filmmakers show no mercy to kids their age), but adults who have grown tired of monotonous actioners with schematically drawn "us versus them" conflicts will get a perverse but nonetheless real pleasure out of Run and Kill.