A Chinese Connection

Johnnie To's Drug War (2012) finds the director working in Mainland China for the first time. As such, he's had to make certain...concessions...to the demands of the mainland marketplace. It's a testament to the director's filmmaking savvy that not only hasn't this hindered his ability to put his trademarked noir sensibility on the screen, it may have intensified it. Still, there are some noticeable differences between this film and his usual crime films.

Note: Here there be spoylers.

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In Every Dream Home, a Heartache

Dream Home (2010, directed by Ho-Cheung Pang) is an artifact of the zeitgeist. The global housing bubble hit Hong Kong, too, and, as it did everywhere else, it popped in 2008. But in the run-up, people did a lot of foolish things. At the beginning of Dream Home, there's an onscreen credit that claims that it's based on a true story, though I haven't verified that. If it is, well, real life is more like a horror movie than we normally think. A pretty outrageous horror movie, at that.

The story here follows Cheng Lai-Sheung (Josie Ho), a telemarketer for a bank who dreams of owning her own flat. The one she's got in mind has a view of the harbor, but such properties are expensive and she has plenty of competition. When the deal she has lined up falls through, she takes drastic action to change the rules of the game to her advantage. This involves brutally murdering eleven people. Real estate can be pretty cutthroat. Literally, in this case.

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