Hou Hsiao-hsien reimagines the gangster genre in the form of a Taiwanese slice of life, an anti-drama, an anti-melodrama, that eases, glides, sneaks into its moments of animosity and violence. Or better say slices of life, plural, to emphasize the unconnected, random, desultory quality. What passes for a narrative has nothing to do with a scheme, a caper, a conflict; it has to do with a way of being. And while maintaining at all times the illusion of disinterested observation, the movie finds its meaning and its moral force in the tension and the distance between the pettiness and aimlessness of the lives on view and the purity and rigor of the visual style. The steady gaze -- the placid gaze -- the aloof gaze -- becomes a withering gaze. And yet, for all that purity and rigor, the style is relaxed, flexible, never stiff, never a formulated strategy that could go ahead on automatic pilot, always dependent instead on an unerring eye for composition and an unerring sense of rhythm. (If you don't pick up the beat, if you go in with some pre-set internal metronome, you're doomed to the fidgets.) Practically every shot proclaims the presence of a major cinematic stylist. Watching them pass by is a sensuous pleasure of the highest and rarest type. And a privilege, too. A hundred and five minutes are too few. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.