One Nite in Mongkok 
旺角黑夜 「Wong Gok hak yeh」
Release Date: May 10th, 2004
Duration: 98 mins.
Director: Derek Yee
Writer: Derek Yee (Screenplay),
Starring: Daniel Wu (Lin Lai-fu), Cecilia Cheung (Dan Dan), Alex Fong (Milo / Miu Chi-sun), Lam Suet (Liu), Sam Lee (Franky), Anson Leung (Ben),
One Nite in Mongkok works as a thriller where its titular location gives it a lot of character. While the plot turns on the various familiar cogs and wheels of a story about the Hong Kong police chasing a hitman over something like a 48-hour period, the more interesting aspect of this picture is of the seedier side of life as experienced on the ground level of the eponymous district and the chaotic forces that give it energy.
Mongkok: one of the most populated places on Earth.
Christmas is approaching but festivities are put on hold as a gang fight leads to a Triad leader’s son dying and his girlfriend being hospitalised. The boss wants revenge and calls on a fixer named Liu (Lam Suet) to get a hitman from Mainland China to kill the rival whose underling was responsible for his son’s death. Enter bespectacled Lin Lai-fu (Daniel Wu). He may be new to killing but coming from a poor village he is on the hunt for money. He is also secretly searching for someone while in Hong Kong. Before he can locate that person, he falls in with a cheerful sex worker named Dan Dan (Cecilia Cheung) after rescuing her from a violent customer. A fellow Mainlander, she takes pity on Lin and as a reward she guides him around Mongkok. What the two don’t know is that Liu is feeding information to a police detective named Miu Chi-sun (Alex Fong) who is trying to prevent a gang war and is prepared to use underhanded means to do it. What unfolds is a chase where luck, chance, and the wits of each character dictate whether the police will catch Lin in Mongkok and whether the killer will achieve his objectives.
If the hook of gangsters, hitmen, and cops draws a viewer in, what keeps their attention is the depth of each character, their many textures, and how each person, initially a stranger, reacts to shifting circumstances as they chase each other around the densely populated area as fate twists their lives together in ever decreasing circles until they get to meet each other.
The dynamic of “hitman hiding with a hooker with a heart of gold” may be a familiar one but it is given a new spin by the fact that both characters are from neighbouring villages but Dan Dan has more experience of living in Hong Kong. While Lin struggles to respect his guide due to her work, Dan Dan has a bit more street smarts and her eyes on cash at all times and she leads him to places high and low while filching money. This creates an interesting angle of their business sides battling with their personal sympathy for one another, especially as the two navigate the cross-cultural difficulties of being poor Mainlanders in illegal trades in Hong Kong, all while being hounded by cops and gangsters. This dynamic adds frisson to every conversation between the two as viewers wonder if they will work together to survive.
For the most part, the cop section plays out like a police procedural as Miu, the archetypical burnt-out detective, tries to manage bosses miserable at missing the Christmas party due to his investigation and a new member of his team, a trigger-happy rookie named Ben (Anson Leung).
With equal time given to these characters, audiences are on the shoulders of cops trying to maintain control of the situation and getting dramatic thrills at watching them bending the rules to do so. Life experience and corruption are demonstrated to Ben by the older cops while his naivete puts people in danger. Further adding to the drama is the slimy and cowardly Liu who double-crosses everyone at the drop of a hat as a stool pigeon.
While Daniel Wu and Cecilia Cheung give good performances, Alex Fong and Lam Suet are really good.
Fong is unrecognisable from his first movie appearances as the high-energy fighter in the Iron Angels action franchise of the late 80s. It is the way he carries himself like a tired warrior resigned to making the best of an increasingly bad situation, sometimes by taking people by the scruff of the neck but mostly through the sighs and pursed lips and frowns and negotiating. Lam Suet is really despicable but not nearly as the awful father he played in the Johnnie To film Breaking News (2004). Here, it is more comic as his money-grubbing ways necessitate him having a fast mouth that leads to him singing like a stool pigeon and betraying his contacts while he also has an amusing off-kilter gait as he spills around scenes in gaudy suits while seeking cash or escape from people putting pressure on him.
The film benefits from having so many contradictory character elements in play. Cultural flavours are diverse as everyone approaches life in the big city differently while people’s capacity for good and bad is dependent upon bravery, experience, and rapaciousness so situations can spiral out of control as different people meet up. The emotions feel real or at least consistent with the characters. There are archetypes at play here but the characterisation and acting ensure they feel real and their actions never feel contrived. Rather than the pen of the writer, what happens has the feeling of fate playing a part in proceedings as people meet or exchange information at just the right time or a person dying turns out to be a good thing. The notion of fate is especially felt in the finale when two characters face death but in different locations, these moments intercut together.
Mongkok itself proves to be a strong character. The constant sight of crowds milling about in streets, narrow alleys, on walkways across busy boulevards, makes for prime chase territory, especially as the area gears up for Christmas and people get lost amidst red Santa costumes, glitzy neon signage, glam karaoke bars, massage parlours, and the more down-at-heel hotels. The whole area feels real and with the use of handheld cameras and filming on the streets, watching the film feels like being drawn into Mongkok.
When action erupts, it feels like a natural result of the characters pushing the film forward by pursuing their own agendas in the area. They all feel authentic to the world of the film and that world has a lot of realism that comes from the way the locations are captured and the cast blend in. This sense of realism makes everything compelling and thrilling while the characterisation and acting adds life and dramatic heft and surprise to what might feel schematic. All of this makes the film highly atmospheric, worth watching, and one of the better gangster films to come from Hong Kong in the 2000s.
For this film, Derek Yee won Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 2005 Hong Kong Film Awards while he took Best Director at the 2005 Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards.