Election (2005); Triad Election (2006)

Election and its sequel, Triad Election, have been playing in various festivals over the last few years, the buzz around them and their director, the prolific Johnny To, being considerably strong. The buzz is justified. Both films are tight, mean little gangster movies, and the now obligatory Faustian morality of the genre (still so overwhelmingly powerful in the first two Godfathers) works here too, because To isn’t trying to outdo Coppola in the Shakespearean grandeur department. To, like David Chase of The Sopranos, sees things more matter of factly.

The characters sell their souls for money and power, but it’s seen here as part of an inevitable process, an organic governing of society that involves the actual government, the triad (like our mafia) and assorted big businesses. The extinguishing of morality is viewed as evolutionary rather than tragic. To paraphrase a masterpiece that also happens to deal in inescapable corruption, To sees the future, though his films are quick to point out that the future, the past, and the present are inseparable.

At around 90 minutes and change each, you should just go for it and watch the Election films in a double bill, the majority of the stuff I just mentioned doesn’t come into play until the second, better, deeper film. Election is, inescapably, concerned with character introduction, we meet our various organizations and figure out the lay of the land as the forthcoming election for the Chairman of the Wo Sing Triad reaches its conclusion.

The election is meant to prevent violent upheavals in leadership, but I imagine you know how effective that turns out to be. The election of this first film is a close race between Lam Lok (Simon Yam), cold, calm, middle class, suburban looking, and Big D (Tony Leung Ka Fai) a dangerous hot head who resents the likelihood of finishing in second place. If you know your gangster movies, then you know Lok is the more dangerous, and this is confirmed beyond a shadow in the film’s abrupt, savage ending.

Election is a bit too dense for its own good. I hate to penalize films that make you work for the plot but I feel that it ultimately doesn’t benefit this film, particularly when compared to Triad Election. Election has a middle act that bogs down in the hunt for a relic that you don’t really care about, with convoluted loyalties that don’t ultimately add up to a whole lot; Triad Election is almost a horror film, following Jimmy (Louis Koo), a secondary character from the first film, as he takes on Lok for control of the triad. Where the first film feels cluttered, Triad Election is confident and more personal, detailing one person’s disintegrating integrity at a hushed, haunting distance. I know “distance” and “personal” don’t normally go hand in hand, but such is the strange tone that To works so well here.

This second film is also more violent and over the top, the lurid set pieces contributing to an escalating sense of a society reaching the brink of collapse, and being reigned back in by a larger structure of deeper corruption. Tradition, again, still turns out to be about who has the biggest stick. Several scenes should be mentioned, but let’s leave it at just one, that of several gangsters, in bizarre animal and clown masks that recall Kubrick’s The Killing, burying someone alive, the steady hum of a vent the only soundtrack. The broad arcs of gangster films are usually the same, it’s the bits of “business” in between that make or break them. Triad Election has enough great little vignettes of inhumanity for five pictures, but I’m going to let you discover the others for yourself.

Election : ★★★

Triad Election : ★★★½

Posted on December 12th, 2007 in 2006, 2005, Reviews, Action, Crime |

© Copyright 2007 Bowen's Cinematic.
Site Designed by Ben Markowitz.
Bowen's Cinematic is powered by WordPress.