PTU: Police Tactical Unit

Three things came to mind while watching this movie.  The first was Kurosawa’s Stray Dog.  The plot concerns a policeman who lost his gun, you see.  It takes place over the course of a single night, as he tries to track down the men who might have it, while his team protects him from a suspicious CID investigator.  The story is not all that similar to Stray Dog beyond the basic premise.

The second was John Woo.  This isn’t entirely fair… except for Jackie Chan movies, Woo is pretty much my only reference point for Hong Kong action films.  It does have a similar attention to style, cheesy music (sometimes endearingly cheesy, but cheesy nonetheless) and moody pacing.  But don’t expect any glorious gun-fu battles here.  It’s much more about the moody pacing, with most of the action reserved for the climax.

Lastly, I thought of film noir.  Pools of brilliant light in dark, deserted streets. The exploration of a brutal underworld, where the strong prey on the weak, on both sides of the law.  Morally questionable decisions and flawed heroes.  But even the bleakest of film noir has a protagonist you can sympathize with to some degree.  There’s no one here to root for, there’s no real human element to it.  We don’t get to know these people as people, and so it ends up feeling like style over substance.  It’s presented as a given that the police should stick to their “look out for your own” code but does it really require so much senseless brutality?  It’s not just a cold worldview, but an unexplained one.

The ending confused me a bit.  Who are these other guys?  Is the CID or PTU after them, or did they just happen to be there?  Perhaps it’s just another random indication that this world is full of corruption and violence.  The message is unclear, if there is one to be had.  There are some noteworthy qualities, especially technical ones, but as a whole the film didn’t do much for me either emotionally or mentally.  Rating: Fair

IMDb