Longest Nite, The (1998)
Directors: Patrick Yau Tat-Chi
Action Director: Yuen Bun
Script: Yau Nai-Hoi, Szeto Kam-Yuen
Producer: Johnnie To Kei-Fung
Wai Ka-Fai
Cast:
Lau Ching-Wan (Yiu Dung)
Tony Leung Chui-Wai
Maggie Siu Mei-Kei
Lung Fong
Lo Hoi-Pang
Ching Siu Lung
Mark Cheng Ho-Nam
Fong Gong
Wong Tin Lam
Wu Chi-Lung
Yuen Bun
Cantonese: : Aau Dut
Mandarin: An4 Hua1
Country: Hong Kong
Language: Cantonese
Running Time: 85 min
Merit:
Film of Merit, 5th Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards
Plot: Two Triad leaders vie for the right to manage a string of casinos in Macau which sparks an exhausting battle. A twist of fate brings the two gangster bosses together in collaboration, but rumors have it otherwise. Watch as a murderous plot unfolds.
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REVIEWS
This was one of the first movies I saw where I was conscious that it was a Milkyway production (see Too Many Ways to Be No. 1 for an overview of Milkyway Images). And the awareness I had of that came from how amazed I was when I saw the film. I was probably expecting a traditional Hong Kong film, with truckloads of gunplay and gangsterism and nothing in the way of a script. But this movie blew me away on all counts. Besides having some fine action, unusual in Hong Kong films for its relative realism, as well as some absolutely spectacular gangster violence, the film had the most intricately-constucted plot of any movie I had seen in years.
It’s a complex tale of corrupt cops, vicious mobsters, and mysterious, thinking-man’s villains. Everybody in the film is a crook, and, surprisingly, there is no remorse on the filmmakers part for any of them. They all screw each other over, and most of them end up brutally slain. But emerging from this is a wondrously tight thriller about Macau’s no.1 corrupt cop (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, looking dangerously skinny and also just plain dangerous). He has to clear out all the suspicious characters in the city in one night, making way for the arrival of a gangster whose life is worth a great deal to every thug and killer who can make it into town. Making things hard for Tony is Lau Ching Wan, who plays a drifter with a scary tattoo and a bald pate, who knows much, much more than he seems to.
It’s hard to figure out what’s meant to be going on for the first hour. That’s a deliberate part of Patrick Yau’s approach, and it works surprisingly well when things are finally made clear. In the meantime, the acting is impressive and the cinematography is pretty much perfect. This one is very different from the Milkyway films that came before it, being without the romanticism of Beyond Hypothermia, the zaniness of Too Many Ways to Be No. 1, and the sweetness of The Odd One Dies, but it’s acid cynicism makes it no less impressive than those earlier works.
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“A diseased hybrid of Orson Welles’ LADY FROM SHANGHAI and TOUCH OF EVIL, Patrick Yau’s neo-noir, THE LONGEST NITE, is a blistering real-time crawl through the sewer stink of human corruption. Bad cop, Tony Leung Chui-Wai (HAPPY TOGETHER, HARDBOILED, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE), is trying to keep the peace for 24 claustraphobic hours as two rival gangs sit down for a truce on the Portugese gambling island of Macau, sort of a Chinese Las Vegas circa 1958. Dashing all over the steaming island, Tony adminsters beatings, tortures suspects, and makes bodies disappear, a high-functioning multitasker if there ever was one. Then the Hitman (Lau Ching-Wan) appears. Bald-headed and ominously-tattooed, he seems to know something that Tony doesn’t, and the two men start tweaking each other’s volumes, as the haunted kaleidoscope of corruption they’re trapped in slowly becomes clear. Sweating in the rotten summer air, the two men start going at each others’ throats and eyes, maintaining the balance of power with generous applications of blood and viscera. A powerful movie that inhales sin, and exhales style.”
—Grady Hendrix, Subway Cinema
“Film noir at its darkest and deepest.”
—Stefan Hammond, Hollywood East
“…The Longest Nite is an expressionistic Macao gangster tour de force starring Tony Leung as an extremely nasty cop under the thumb of a triad kingpin. His life suddenly spins out of control with the arrival of a mysterious man played by Lau Ching-Wan, who has set up a conspiracy against Leung so nihilistic and convoluted it would have Brian de Palma drooling.”
—Barry Long, Village Voice
*Scenes from The Longest Nite,
© Milkyway Image Productions.
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