The opening of the Hong Kong gangster film “Triad Election” is worrisome: A love scene, followed by a long blabfest in a corporate boardroom? Where’s the mayhem? Where’s the bloodshed?
About five minutes into the film, though, the balance is restored and the throat-slitting and Achilles-severing begins. The term “good guy” doesn’t really apply to “Triad Election,” in which almost all the characters are thugs, scheming to sell each other out. The backdrop of the scheming is the process of finding a new leader for the Hong Kong mafia (the Triad).
Jimmy is the main not-exactly-good guy, who thinks that if he gets to the top of the Triad heap of mangled corpses, he can make a better, non-mob life for his children. But, like many Hong Kong mob movies, “Triad Election” is not about fleshed-out characters or intricate stories. It’s a blunt, grimly efficient action movie that underlines the lies gangsters tell themselves so they, at least, can believe they’re good guys.
A sequel to a film called, simply, “Election,” the overly talky “Triad” is mostly distinguished by its gruesomeness. Many of the more or less interchangeable goons are whacked before we’ve even been introduced to them. And, you know the cliché that nobody needs to see sausage being made? Well, you really don’t want to see human hamburger being made.
| “Triad Election”
NOT RATED but contains super-graphic violence and strong language|1 hour, 27 minutes|GANGSTERS|Directed by Johnny To; written by Yau Nai-hoi and Yip Tin-sing; photography by Cheng Siu-keung; starring Simon Yam, Louis Koo, Wong Tin-lam, Yao Yung, Lam Suet|Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
