The 9th Precinct (2019)

The 9th Precinct (2019)
Chinese Title: 第九分局
Translation: Ninth Division

 

Starring: Roy Chiu, Chia-Chia Peng, Chen-Ling Wen, Eugenie Liu, Blaire Chang, Ying-Hsuan Kao, Mario Pu
Director: Wang Ding-Lin
Action Director: Eddie Tsai

 

I’m curious as to where the whole “Supernatural Police Division” storyline started. In the late 1980s, we had Alien Nation, which supposed that police would have a special division involving alien-related crimes. At about the same time, there was Dead Heat (1988), starring Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo. That film had two cops investigating a case involving resurrected corpses, only for one to get killed and resurrected, too. In recent years, Hollywood gave us R.I.P.D. (2013), which was about underworld/dead police officers (played by Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges) being part of special department fighting monsters on Earth. Will Smith was in the movie Bright, which teams a human cop with an Orc cop for otherworldly shenanigans.

Then there’s the Chinese side of things. In 1990, Lam Ching-Ying came out with Magic Cop, in which he was a policeman with extensive training in Taoist rituals, which made him the best fit for crimes involving the supernatural. Before Ip Man, Wilson Yip made 2002, a movie that I once described as “Magic Cop meets Gen-X Cops” (for Hong Kong cinephiles) or “The Ghostbusters meets The Mod Squad meets The Men in Black” (for those with more Hollywood sensibilities. That film revolved around a police unit—consisting of two detectives—for crimes of a supernatural bent.

The 9^th Precinct is a Taiwanese film that plays like 2002, but with more drama and less action. It revolves around a cop named Chen Chiao-Hao (Roy Chiu), who possesses the ability to see ghosts. During a routine traffic stop, Chen and his partner discover a dead body in the driver’s trunk. The latter quickly comes out guns a-blazin’, killing Chen’s partner. He is about to blow Chen away, too, when a female ghost appears and scares the killer. This gives Chiao-Hao enough time to shoot the perp and bring him down. The next day, Chen gets in an argument with his superiors for including that detail about “being saved by a ghost” and turns in his badge in disgust.

On his way out of the police station, Chen is approached by a man named Mr. Chang (Peng Chia-Chia), who gives him the old spiel about “the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find your purpose.” He invites him to visit the “Ninth Precinct,” a level of the police station that is hidden from sight via the ingenious mechanism of the elevator that is always broken. This hidden precinct is designed to work with ghosts, mainly in the form of investigating hauntings and then helping the ghosts move on with their “lives” so they can be reincarnated. Since Chen has always possessed the ability to see ghosts, he is a good candidate for this line of work. Chen eventually accepts and is partnered up with Mr. Chang and a young lady named Hsueh (Wen Chen-Ling, aka Forest Wen), who often acts as a channeler of spirits—that is, she frequently allows herself to be possessed.

Despite Mr. Chang’s disapproval, Chen gets curious about the identity of the ghost who saved him back when he was a regular cop. According to his new boss, the purpose of the 9^th precinct is help ghosts move on, not personally settle their worldly affairs, even if it does involve murder. Chen disobeys orders and finds out that the identity of his savior specter is Huang Ya-Hui (Blaire Chang), a mistress of a politician who improbably recovered from a horrible car accident. His investigation puts him in contact with a reporter, Ju-Hsin (Eugenie Liu, of Mon…Mon…Mon…Monsters), who happens to be Mr. Chang’s estranged daughter. Another case puts Chang, Chen and Hsueh on the property of Hou Gei, the killer from the first scene. Apparently, a number of young women have been buried there, including Huang Ya-Hui. The fact that all of the women had been checked into a prestigious hospital before their disappearance will soon pit our supernatural policemen against the hospital’s sinister owner, played by actress-singer Sonia Sui.

The best way to summarize the experience of The 9^th Precinct is to say that it is equal parts police procedural thriller, The Sixth Sense and Angel Heart. The film is surprisingly heavy on the drama, with a lot of the ghost sequences being treated with a nice helping of emotion. It’s not quite maudlin, but Mr. Chang talks a lot about empathy being necessary for the job and the filmmakers imbue a lot of the ghostly interactions with sympathy for the spooks. After all, the vast majority of them are not harmful, they are just confused and need a loving nudge in the right direction.

There is a bit of genre juggling, as would be expected from a movie like this made in the Far East. There are some moments of humor, like Mr. Chang firing his gun at Chen after finding him at his daughter’s apartment. An early scene at the 9^th precinct shows a holding pen for the more unruly ghosts, including a jiangshi, or hopping vampire. That was a nice nod to the sort of film that opened the door for later movies like this. A Russian Roulette interrogation scene also has some moments of black humor that made me chuckle. There are obvious moments of horror, including the mid-credits sequence that suggests that there will be a sequel with a…(sigh)…World Ending Event.

There is a little bit of action here and there, most of which is reserved for the ending. The credited fight choreographer is Eddie Tsai, who hasn’t done much of note as an action director, but has done stuntwork in films like Sammo Hung’s My Beloved Bodyguard and Paradox, which was choreographed by Hung. The finale has some brief moments of hand-to-hand combat that are very quick and economical, with the sort of fast-and-simple moves and takedowns that you would expect from a trained cop. There is also a short gunfight in that sequence, too. The Netflix thumbnail for this movie shows Forest Wen wielding what looks like a katana, but don’t expect any swordplay in this: she dispels one ghost with her sword and the rest with her gun (loaded with holy water).

I’d say the film’s biggest flaw is the Character Background Dump that happens right before the climax. Chen Chih-Hao and Hsueh are hanging around the precinct after some MAJOR EVENTS have taken place and start going into their own tragic backstories. It doesn’t feel natural; in fact, it reminds me of a similar scene in The Magnificent Warriors, in which the characters are tied up and start telling the other person’s backstory. This flashbacks here are obviously a bit deeper and well-directed than the dialog dump of that film, but the scenario is similar.

I won’t tell you all to rush out and watch The 9^th Precinct on Netflix, but it does make for a more sensitive and thoughtful sibling to Wilson Yip’s 2002. For me, that was enough.