Police inspector and excellent hostage negotiator Ho Sheung-Sang finds himself in over his head when he is pulled into a 72 hour game by a cancer suffering criminal out for vengeance on Hong Kong's organized crime Syndicates. Dying Wah has nothing to be afraid of anymore when he realizes that he has only 4 weeks to live, and he's determined to get revenge for his father. Later, when Wah successfully gets away in a robbery, detective San makes up his mind and chases after Wah and arrests him. But, we can only have one winner in a game, who's gonna win? The one thing that can be said about RUNNING OUT OF TIME is that it's an immensely clever film. It's interesting to note that the film's writers are French, which may explain the movie's "out of the norm" vibe, as it doesn't really fit in with what is commonly called "Hong Kong Cinema".<br/><br/>The movie concerns a thief who plans revenge on some criminal types using the assistance of an equally clever cop. But first he has to convince the cop to join his personal crusade, and so begins a series of games where the thief manuevers the cop into his plan.<br/><br/>Quite a clever movie.<br/><br/>7 out of 10<br/><br/>(go to www.nixflix.com for a more detailed review of this movie or full-length reviews of other foreign films) This film is a refreshing change of pace from the mindless Hong Kong triad movies I have grown so tired of. There are no spectacular gun fights. No car chases. And practically minimal action to speak of. The audience is kept in suspense for the most part, though certain aspects of the so called "ploy" by Andy Lau are quite obvious.<br/><br/>The film has been hailed as a departure from the genre of violent triad films, and as an "intelligent" crime film. To an extent, it is. But, to some extent, it still fails the "believability" test. One can hardly picture any triad member to be dumb enough to not see through the female disguise of Andy Lau in a second. It also seemed to have fallen for the "if someone was seriously ill, the said someone will be coughing up copious amounts of blood regularly" thing Chinese films seem to go for all the time.<br/><br/>The subtle relationship between the two lead characters is a refreshing change.<br/><br/>All in all an enjoyable film, even though the concept is not new and there are few surprises. >
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295 weeks ago