The Place For The Latest Movie Reviews
Cast: Louis Koo, Wallace Chung, Vicki Zhao
When a police sting goes bad, a master criminal (Wallace Chung, Drug War) makes a desperate choice: he forces the cops to shoot him. Once there, he refuses treatment, instead waiting for his cohorts to break him out.
Caught between an obsessed cop (Louis Koo, Triad Election) and the troubled surgeon assigned to save his life (Zhao Wei, RED CLIFF), the hospital is now a taught-and-tense situation that could turn into a bloody battleground at any moment.
"Three" represents the number of main characters in the film starting with the female brain surgeon who has had two mistakes while operating on her patients because she refuses to take the needed down time and simply over extends herself. The second is the criminal who takes a bullet to the head, lucky for him the bullet never reached any areas of the brain that would have been fatal but after being taken to the hospital and put in the young doctor's care he decides he does not want surgery because he is waiting for his gang to come and get him out. And then there is the cop who can be in big trouble for illegally shooting an unarmed man which has put them all in this situation to begin with.
The story takes place inside the hospital and in the Johnnie To style we have all come to expect and love. There is not really any action for most of the film, instead there are a lot of cat and mouse type maneuvers going on between the criminal and the cop while the doctor attempts to get the man to have the surgery while dealing with her own issues. This may sound boring to some but it is anything but that. These are three complex characters that are well written and well developed and the dialogue is both clever and smart. The film also manages to mustard up a good bit of tension and suspense as they all wait for the inevitable to happen which is a showdown between the cops and the criminals.
The action doesn't happen until the end but when it hits we get blood spraying and slow motion shootouts in true To style. He is one of the few directors around that can make violence look so elegant. After the tense and exciting gun battle the film then neatly wraps up all the loose ends and it finishes up perfectly.
Another thing that made the film so good was the acting, Louis Koo, Wallace Chung and Vicki Zhao are all excellent as the cop, criminal and doctor, they really bring their best to their characters and they all have great chemistry together. "Three" is not Johnnie To's best film but that is the thing about him, it doesn't need to be his best to be an entertaining film that is better than most and that's what this film is. It is playful, exciting, dramatic and even a bit funny at times making for another solid thriller from one of cinemas’ best.
"Three" is playing in Theaters now and I highly recommend checking it out. You can find out where you can see it by going HERE.
Released by Well Go USA Entertainment
*** 3/4 Out Of *****