Time and Tide (2000)
literal translation: Follow the Current Against the Current
cast: Nicholas Tse, Wu Bai, Anthony Wong, Joventino Couto Remotigue, Candy Lo, and Cathy Chui
director: Tsui Hark

Recently, I reviewed Hong Kong's largest grossing film to date "Shaolin Soccer," and gave the film a passing review, and even admitted that I enjoyed the Westernized special effects. Now, as I reach back in the Hong Kong film archive I denounce Tsui Hark's "Time and Tide" for not only using Hollywood style special effects, but for also for being dominated by Western filmmaking techniques.

I suppose the difference would be that Stephen Chow's "Shaolin Soccer" earns its keep by being a film that I am convinced would be entertaining with the skinny budget of any other Hong Kong film or with little to no special effects at all.

To boot Chow's film, for the lack of better wording, was brimming with conventional cliches, and yet somehow managed to freshen some rather moldy and cobwebbed areas of the now all too common lame teenage-demographic sports tour de force comedy that plagues the local Cineplex every year.

Even without the Hollywoodization of Tsui's "Time and Tide," the film would be a mess. The Western imperialism that exists in nearly every sequence is only half of the problem that clings onto the film like a parasite.

To say "Time in Tide" is confusing is a stretch, if not the understatement of the year. The plot, which focuses more on befuttling back-stories, more times than not neglects what is going on in the here and now.

Situations of supposed importance arise and you will be damned if you understand why.

I must admit I stopped "Time and Tide" half-way through and consulted Ryan Law's Hong Kong Movie DataBase which produced a fairly good plot summary, however, not one good enough to make the first part of the film or the second anymore interesting.

"Time and Tide" corners Tyler (Tse, who you might remember from "Gen-X Cops") the film's protagonist between a rock-and-a-hard-place. He joins a private security force headed up Anthony Wong (in a lukewarm part) and eventually is trapped by his relation to an ex-member of a multi-cultural mercenary team who want him dead. And guess what? So do the police in Hong Kong.

To make things fun Tyler has also impregnated a lesbian during a drunken one-night-stand. The mercenary, portrayed by Wu Bai, also has a pregnant girlfriend in tow who later provides an on-screen moment possibly never seen anywhere else.

Regardless, "Time and Tide" is nothing short of Tsui Hark asleep at the wheel. Several scenes contain a mix of David Fincher style camera tilts and action sequences that echo all the way back to "A Better Tomorrow III," where Tsui was operating under the false pretense that he was capable of making action pictures just like his recently detached business partner John Woo.

After giving "A Better Tomorrow III," a negative review a friend of mine suggested that Tsui Hark is the best when he is acting like himself and not someone else. "Time and Tide" is definitely support for his argument.

For reasons unknown to me, "Time and Tide" received a limited release in North America where it was fairly well received by critics, despite having met mixed reactions by Chinese audiences, and garnishing less than $5 million at the HK box office.