A very dark and grim thriller filmed in black & white, mostly in the slums of Hong Kong. This movie is so atmospheric with a soundtrack that compliments it to perfection.

This really is one of the best thrillers I have ever seen. Emotions run high in this true masterpiece of a movie!

Hackneyed narrative that is mercifully saved by some visually inspired production design. The richly constructed look and feel of this film cannot be overstated. From the opening frame, One's senses are immediately assaulted, if not drowned, by the reek and penetrating decay of some saturated underbelly where these token, yet serviceable, characters aptly inhabit. The performances are as effective as the thin and woefully predictable writing will allow, but with as many highly-successful film-making paragons(Wilson Yip, Kin-ye Au, etc.) attached, one might expect a bit more. Nevertheless, the technical team and its bravura display of visual mastery more than successfully manage to compensate for the film's more than obvious weaknesses.

It is rare to use black and white images to present Hong Kong's urban space, and the lights of thousands of homes are also gloomy and desperate. The tyrannical police detective, the weak female, the broken left hand, the painful wisdom teeth, and the playable setting make the movie full of tension. Hong Kong, under Zheng Baorui's black-and-white lens, is a city we rarely see on the big screen: it is not so much a city as a huge garbage dump. Never seen that much trash in one movie, even documentaries on the subject of picking up trash are hard to compare. Black and white are black, there is no clean place, there is no clean person.