The easiest and most accessible Wong Kar Wai film, which can really get people into his filmmaking has never looked better than this Criterion Collection Blu-ray disc. Sure I have seen better looking discs, but I am sure their source material was kept better, and this is certainly the best this film has ever looked (of course I have the original Hong Kong DVD with the original theatrical cut which looks terrible, but I did like that cut). This is really 2 films in one, both about cops in love, and both dealing with the same locations of Chungking Mansion and a food stall called Midnight Express, but two very different films, the first a noirish thriller, and the second a screwball romantic comedy. Both are fun, and both are pretty silly and strange, but both are quite enjoyable. This is fun, lyrical and fantastic film, and worth seeing again now that is is on criterion and has never looked better.

The first story is that of Cop 223 He Qiu-Wu (Kaneshiro Takeshi) a plainclothes detective that we see running through the city (the film is printed with step framing so the world blurs around him) and catches a pimp, but not before running into a strange woman in a blond wig (Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia) who he says he will fall in love with, but that running into her was the closest he will be to her. Then we see him mostly hanging out around a food stall pining over his lost girlfriend May, and trying to call other girls, none of whom want to hear from him. He decides he will move on on May 1st, his birthday, a month away if he has not heard from her, and goes to a convenience store and buys a can of pineapples that will expire on May 1st each day, and he plans on eating them on May 1st.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS….

Meanwhile the blond lady, gets set up by a bartender to smuggle drugs using a group of Pakistani’s. She gets them all set up, tailored clothes to fit everything, but they disappear on her at the airport, leaving only their passports, so she must find them, or she is warned on May 1st she will be killed.

Depressed on his birthday he ponders expirations of cans and love affairs, and eats all of pineapple, before going out to a bar, where he tries to chat up the blond girl, and eventually they get soused, and he takes her to a hotel because she passed out, and he just sits and eats and watches TV all night. In the morning he gets up to leave, and takes off her shoes, and goes running to work.

WHen she wakes up, she sees where she is, then goes and gets a gun, and kills the bartender, and loses the wig and disappears into the crowds.

The second story also centers around the Midnight Express food stall, where a new beat cop 663 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), and he keeps buying the same food for his girlfriend an air hostess (Valerie Chow Kar Ling) each night, until the boss gets him to change one night, and the next she leaves him because she wants more change. He is totally depressed and doesn’t notice Faye (Wong Faye) who works at the midnight Express for her cousin, and has taken a fancy to him.

The air hostess leaves a letter and her keys to the cop’s apartment, and the cop doesn’t take it. Faye ends up looking at the letter and eventually taking the key and going into 663′s apartment and replacing all the stuff that was from the air hostess, eventually even erasing a message from her, and getting caught, but running out.

663 goes to make a date with her at the bar California across the street from the Midnight Express, but she never shows. He goes to the Midnight Express and learns Faye headed for the real California, and left him a letter, which he isn’t going to read, and lets it get wet, but then goes back for it. It is a written ticket for sick months, but the destination is unreadable.

6 Months later Faye returns, now an airline hostess, and finds that 663 is no longer a cop, and now runs the Midnight Express, and is redoing it, and he asks her for the old destination, and she writes him a new one.

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Really a lovely film about relationships and loss, and not being able to see what is right in front of your face. Such a light and fun film, really a breath of fresh air, and Wong Faye is so damn cute, like an elf. And I love her version of the cranberries song in Chinese! A must watch again and again.