Disc Reviews
Three
Johnnie’s To’s latest action thriller is set entirely within the confines of a Hong Kong hospital. In his native Hong Kong To is a very prolific director, but his films do not get such a wide distribution in the West. Three film was shot in a functioning hospital in Guangzhou in Southern Canton on mainland China. The props required for the hospital were made or used for the ward, hopefully without too much disruption to patients, although I am sure that patients and staff were fascinated by the filming process (even if the hospital managers were less so). On its release in China the film received very positive reviews hence a release here in the UK, albeit a very minimum one.
Three opens with an operation from inside the head and that is where this film mostly plays, in the head. It is a heavily stylised thriller with a pulsing soundtrack that gives the suspense some life. There’s nothing wrong with this, some of Alfred Hitchcock’s most iconic films were driven by Bernard Herrmann’s music. The story centres on the duty ward supervisor, who is also a brain surgeon, a violent criminal who has been admitted following a head wound in a shootout with the police, the arresting police Inspector in charge and some of the patients on the ward is brought inn for an operation. The ward is thrown into chaos when a criminal who has been shot in the head in a bungled robbery. He is under close guard as he poses grave danger to the public. This is a high profile criminal and the hospital is crawling with police, in uniform and undercover alike posing as hospital staff. Despite being handcuffed he is able to get a message to the gang who are expected to arrive and hold a mass shoot out.
The plot of Three is somewhat convoluted with the worried expressions of Dr. Qian offering nothing more than a red herring. The plot is tight and despite a fairly slow first half there are few empty plot devices to the film until it gets to one of the most dramatic shoot outs since John Woo’s Hard Boiled (1990). The finale shoot out is filmed in ultra-slow motion with lots of computer generated effects making the whole violence more dream-like than a Sam Peckinpah piece of slo-mo violence. The camera appears to move in a whirly-gig manner around the players. In many ways this scene is unlike anything else we have seen on film before and is capped off with a vertigo like climax with the Inspector and the villain literally hanging by a thread. As ‘beautiful’ as the violent ending might be, it is debatable what quality it brings to the film overall. Three is unlikely to get broad viewing; at best it may become a cult film like Hard Boiled for example but thus is unlikely.
Chris Hick