Loving You by Johnnie To Kei-Fung (1995)
9 June 2008A decent though not amazing Johnnie To thriller with shades of REGARDING HENRY. My favorite To leading manning Lau Ching Wan is excellent as always and Carman Lee is good too, and actually the film only suffers because the action is only mediocre. An opening stunt falling off a roof looks ridiculous, and the action never gets much better, but the film itself is enjoyable throughout. Worth checking out, and the Region 3 Shaw disc looks amazing. Damn I wish all Hong Kong discs looked this good.
Lau Ching-Wan plays Lau a despicable Hong Kong cop who pushes his lovely wife (Carman Lee Yuek-Tung) into the arms of another man through total neglect, and womanizing and drinking. On a big drug deal, he has a cop and junkie in the room, and the evil drug dealer (Tou Chung-Wah) realizes the woman is a cop and kills her, and injects the junkie with drugs. Some radio static stops them from saving the girl. One of Lau’s cops tries to get the junkies heart started, and ends up breaking his rips and killing him, and Lau callously has him transfered. Lau also ruins the career of another cop by reporting him for asking Lau to help him with his nephew who was arrested for drugs. Lau keeps ignoring his wife, not going to dinner with her mom when they had planned it, and getting so drunk he doesn’t even go home. Finally he agrees to meet her, and she tells him she is pregnant and he flips out, then he tells her that it isn’t is and she is moving home, and he freaks out and leaves.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
LOVING YOU Region 3 DVD available at Five Star Laser
Lau goes back to the bar he drinks at, and leaves with the beautiful bartender (the lovely Ruby Wong Cheuk-Ling), but she sneaks, out and the doors close, and he realizes it was a trap, and the drug dealer shows up, and Lau chases him outside, but gets shot in the head. Lau doesn’t give up though, and keeps trying to move in until he manages to handcuff himself to the perp.
The cops arrive and the perp is arrested and Lau is taken to the hospital for brain surgery, as the bullet went through his nasal cavity and tongue and lodged in his jaw. Lau’s wife returns to take care of him, and won’t give an answer to her lover if she is going to leave with him for Canada as she feels like she has to take care of Lau. And Lau tries to be nice, but he can’t accept the baby, he can accept she cheated but not the baby.
Lau goes back to work, but he is a bit skittish. Meanwhile the drug dealer breaks his own arm to say he was being roughed up by police, and escapes in the ambulance. Lau is tired after his mission and his nose is strangely running, but he is lucky he doesn’t get in his car as it explodes.
Lau goes to the hospital and finds he has a hole in his brain that is leaking into his nasal cavity and he needs another surgery to fix it. As he leaves, some cops come to take him to a safe house to protect him from the drug dealer, but he gets a call telling him that the dealer has his wife, and he has to come alone, so he handcuffs the cops and goes to meet the drug dealer in the old TVB building (how weird is that?).
Lau finds his wife locked in an elevator going up and down, and he runs up and down trying to get to her, his brain leaking, and him feeling worse and worse.He finally manages to get to his wife, and has a stand off with the drug dealer, and shoots him, igniting gas and blowing up the floor an he barely gets out with his wife who is now in labor.
Lau gets his wife to an ambulance, and then collapses. He wakes up after his second brain surgery and sets out for the nursery to find his child, and sees his wife with him, and goes and holds him, and we end with the two of them years later walking their child.
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Really an enjoyable movie. Not too deep or amazing, but Lau Ching-wan is always a joy to watch.
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