After several less personal works made in order to make its studio survive during Hong Kong movie industry's crisis, Johnnie To came back to the more personal vein of The Mission with PTU. With a pitch borrowing from Kurosawa's Stray Dog where The Mission was borrowing from Seven Samurai, it is taking To more time here to install the whole scheme of a movie dealing with the police's corruption. PTU might not be as immediately fascinating as The Mission but the patience gets rewarded in the movie's second half. To's elegant directing mixed with Chung Chin Wing's score create fascinating moments of abstraction whereas a The Longest Nite-like darkness gets perfectly along with humour reminding of The Mission. We could reproach To for reproducing a formula. But such maestria is rare in contemporary genre cinema. And this is what Hong Kong cinema has always been about even during its 1985-1997 golden age: formula. And it never prevented great cinema from being made. In the contrary...
