Screen/Society--"Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In" (Soi Cheang, 2024)

TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN
(Soi Cheang, 126 min, Hong Kong, Cantonese w/ English subtitles, DCP)

"A runaway hit in Hong Kong, where it became the second-highest grossing domestic picture of all time, Cheang's inspired mash-up of martial arts movie and neo-noir crime thriller takes a headlong dive into the cramped, lawless Kowloon Walled City-a decommissioned 19th-century military fort, since demolished, here recreated by a miracle of mangy production design-in the dirty, desperate old days of the crime-plagued 1980s. New in town, illegal immigrant Raymond Lam finds himself smack in the middle of an all-out war between local vigilantes, led by Louis Koo, and triad capos, including an blinged-up Sammo Hung and sidekick Philip Ng, their savage decapitation- and defenestration-filled clashes choreographed for maximum bone-crunching impact by Kenji Tanigaki." - Metrograph

"Unbound by physics or any sense of psychological realism, TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN is also probably the best comic book adaptation you'll see this year, featuring a murderer's row of Hong Kong stars like Louis Koo, Aaron Kwok and Sammo Hung, and featuring the sort of intricate maximalist production design that puts most other blockbusters to shame." - Simon Abrams, rogerebert.com