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Nothing crueler than a fake light in a pit, thus the titular nod to Spielberg's sci-fi optimism. Crushed doll follows pinned mouse in quick succession, skewered cat completes the précis of Hong Kong juveniles rattling the cage, and Tsui Hark is just getting warmed up. "Where's all this garbage coming from?" A bomb in a movie theater courtesy of bored dweebs (Albert Au, Lung Tin Sang, Che Biu Law), a virulent lark appreciated by the teenage misanthrope (Lin Chen-Chi) who blackmails them into an alliance. "I got some funny stuff myself." The sort of punkette who confronts a flasher by tossing a cigarette down his undies, she handily takes over the peewee terrorists who are being investigated by her cop brother (Lo Lieh). All fun and games with stripped tourists in hijacked buses until a bundle of banknotes lands in their hands, suddenly "it's like a war between the triads." The culmination of Tsui's vehement early period, a blistering jeremiad suspended between the human hopelessness of its content and the cinematic zest of its form. Alienated youth and debased rebellion, an island of decaying institutions, might as well blow it up. "We eat the eggs, then we kill the chicken." Underworld bosses do double-duty as nightclub disc-jockeys while the colonial presence is embodied by gun-running Vietnam War vets, buff humanoids in shades grumbling about their perilous trade. A marvel of all-pervasive abrasion, a frenetic spree momentarily frozen for a tableau of schoolboys giving the camera the bras d'honneur, cp. Buñuel's Los Olvidados. The acrid climax sees the paint balloons of earlier pranks turn into blood squibs, the last kid mad and poisoned and machine-gunning the screen with protest snapshots atop a gargantuan cemetery. "In ten years, there'll be no room left around here." With Ray Lui, Bruce Baron, Chu Shing-Choi, Lee Chun-Wa, Nigel Falgate, Deannie Yip, Leong Po-Chih, John Sham, and Ronny Yu.
--- Fernando F. Croce |