Arguably Tsui’s angriest film, this live-wire and nihilistic HK New Wave entry sees the collision of rebellious youth, lowly gangsters and nasty foreigners as society crumbles into death, violence, cruelty and insanity.
Review #3,030
Dir. Tsui Hark
1980 | Hong Kong | Action, Crime, Thriller | 95min | 2.35:1 | Cantonese & English
Not rated – likely to be M18 for violence, nudity and disturbing themes
Cast: Lo Lieh, Lin Chen-Chi, Paul Che Biu-Law, Albert Au Shui-Keung, Lung Tin-Sang
Plot: Three stupid young men accidentally run over and kill a pedestrian and then, blackmailed by a crazy female witness, use violence to save their skins in the urban jungle.
Awards: Official Selection (Berlinale)
Source: Spectrum Films / Fotocine
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Slightly Mature/Disturbing – Youth Rebels; Violence & Sadism; Survival & Greed
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Cult Mainstream
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
Death, violence, cruelty and insanity mark Tsui Hark’s sophomore feature, which is so nihilistic that even today its seething anger towards all that is wrong with society still feels so palpable.
No wonder the original 100-minute cut was banned in Hong Kong, containing scenes of youths making bombs and exploding them in public places, recalling the controversial 1967 riots.
Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind is now restored in a 95-minute cut, supervised by Tsui, that contains some of the excised footage that survived only on VHS tape.
Pearl (Lin Chen-Chi with her sharp facial features) is as rebellious and sadistic a teenage girl as you can find—please don’t ask what she does with a cat.
After witnessing a trio of boys knocking down and killing a person with their car in a spontaneous joyride in the wee hours of the night, she blackmails them into committing a series of crimes.
“A girl on the bus had a bomb. She made us strip.”
But when they unwittingly find themselves in possession of a great deal of suspicious Japanese cheques that they hope to cash out, they become embroiled in the nasty underworld of corruption instigated by foreign actors.
A stake-to-the-heart attack on colonialism that portrays the Whites as relentlessly exploitative fools who are in need of some kind of comeuppance, Dangerous Encounters also imagines a Hong Kong on the brink of anarchy, as Pearl and the boys become desperate in their quest for survival.
Lo Lieh (yes, that guy from 1972’s King Boxer) has a supporting role as Pearl’s embittered police officer brother.
With the bonkers final act set in a hilly cemetery, Tsui piles death upon death, visually and symbolically, as if to say this would be the final destination of a place and its people if they continue down a certain path.
With nifty editing and over-the-top performances, Dangerous Encounters is that HK New Wave entry that feels like a time capsule and time bomb rolled into one—a live-wire piece of cinema that somehow becomes abnormally Zen-like when Tsui uses Jean-Michel Jarre’s popular ‘Oxygene (Part IV)’ for a foot chase sequence. That was when the film fully clicked for me.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 