HK action comedy Rob N Roll are as good as they get
In a pairing of greats, German film-maker Wim Wenders directs Japanese actor Koji Yakusho as a dedicated toilet cleaner in Tokyo going through his cyclical rituals: rising every dawn, misting his bonsai plants, downing coffee, then heading out to Shibuya Ward’s 17 public toilets to scrub and mop.
Perfect Days sounds like the unsexiest movie ever.
But 78-year-old auteur Wenders has traversed Paris, Texas (1984) and communed with angels on Wings Of Desire (1987). He also visited Tokyo for Tokyo-Ga, his 1985 documentary on his Japanese cinema idol Yasujiro Ozu.
Gordon Lam and Richie Jen buddy up as timid wannabe robbers who cross paths with an actual bad-a** robber, played by Aaron Kwok, when they unwittingly foil his heist.
Director Albert Mak has long been an assistant of Hong Kong cinema doyen Johnnie To (Drug War, 2012; Life Without Principle, 2011).
Whether To appreciates this parody of his crime dramas featuring his stock players as losers, Rob N Roll is a blast.
Lam and Jen’s pair of dispirited middle-aged best friends are, respectively, a taxi driver with a crabby pregnant wife and a widowed social worker behind on his nursing home rent. They plan a robbery to plug their finances.
Kwok has a rocking time subverting his Heavenly King image as the pro wrestler turned buck-toothed bandit, who hires them to retrieve his bag of stolen cash after it is mislaid in Lam’s cab.
From his Yau Ma Tei neighbourhood money exchange heist – which is also the scene of a subsequent secondary hold-up – the action fans out across the territory.
Maggie Cheung Ho-yee’s ambitious lady cop and her young partner (Leung Chung-hang) are in pursuit.
Lam Suet, John Chiang and Michael Wong add to the melee as triad figures, the last losing a finger amid the shoot-outs and slip-ups.
With clockwork nimbleness, Mak locks together the dozens of moving parts and the dozens more zany characters, all excellently played.
The caper is a model of old-school efficiency. It has brio and heart in the trio’s bromance, and in portraying – under the guise of farce – the struggles of the city’s underclass.
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