Time and Tide (2000)

Time and Tide (2000) Chinese Title: 順流逆流 Translation: Forward flow reverse flow

Starring: Nicholas Tse Ting-Fung, Wu Bai, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Cathy Tsui Chi-Kei, Candy Lo Hau-Yam, Joventino Couto Remotigue, Joe Lee Yiu-Ming, Jack Kao Kuo-Hsin, Kenji Tanigaki, Cheung Hung-On, Raven Choi Yip-San

Director: Tsui Hark

Action Director: Xiong Xin Xin

Nineteen Ninety-Five was an uneven year at the box office for visionary Hong Kong director Tsui Hark. On one hand, his star-studded Lunar New Year offering The Chinese Feast was a massive success. On the other hand, his other two movies were two enormous flops at the box office. One of them was Love in the Time of Twilight, which had hoped to capitalize on the success Tsui’s The Lovers from the previous year. Even worse was the box office failure of The Blade, his deconstructionist take on wuxia pian and what would essentially be the nail in the coffin for the early 1990s wire-fu boom (save a couple of stragglers).

After that, he turned his sights to Hollywood, as his colleague and former collaborator John Woo had done and was seeing reasonably good dividends in so doing. After all, the turnover of Hong Kong back to China was looming on the horizon and nobody knew what would happen to people’s rights, let alone the ability to express themselves artistically. Much like Woo (and Ringo Lam after him), Tsui Hark’s arrival in Hong Kong was done via a Jean-Claude Van Damme flick, the deliriously entertaining Double Team. Unlike Woo, who worked with Van Damme when the latter was at the peak of his mainstream popularity, Tsui Hark was given these projects during the actor’s decline. Both Double Team and it’s follow up, Knock Off, were modest successes at best, if disappointments at the local box office.

Between 1996 and 1999, Tsui Hark only directed one Hong Kong production. That was A Chinese Ghost Story: A Tsui Hark Animation. Tsui had previously produced the popular 1987 fantasy film, which Ching Siu-Tung had directed. I have not seen it yet, but my understanding is that it falls in the realm of “pretty good,” with decent animation being disrupted by unconvincing CGI enhancements.

Time and Tide was supposed to Tsui Hark’s “triumphant” return to Hong Kong (live-action) cinema: a stylish action film with the heart that was missing from his two Hollywood outings. The film currently enjoys a 6.7 score at the IMDB, which suggest that he was mostly successful. There is still a contingent of fans who find the film soulless in comparison to his earlier movies. I find myself taking a middle ground between those felt that “the real Tsui Hark is back” and those who watched it and longed for the days of Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain.

The narrative is…odd. Tyler (Nicholas Tse, of Invisible Target and Dragon Tiger Gate) is a barista working at some club in Hong Kong. One evening, he catches a lesbian couple having an argument: one of girls leaves in a huff; the other, Jo (Cop Shop Babes’s Cathy Tsui), goes to the bar in hopes of getting high. She and Tyler get drunk instead and Jo wakes up the next morning in Tyler’s apartment…in his bed. Jo turns out to be a cop and accuses Tyler of slipping her a roofie and raping her. In any case, Jo finds out that their drunken tryst occurred during her fertile period and is now pregnant.

Nine months later, Jo is a few weeks away from labor and Tyler is trying to help her (especially after discovering that she has left the Force). Tyler hooks up Uncle Ji (Anthony Wong, of Princess D and The Big Bullet), a former loan shark who now runs an unlicensed bodyguard business. In a series of bizarre coincidences, Tyler starts fantasizing about making a lot of money and moving the Brazilian coastal city of Aracajú (in the state of Sergipe) to start a new life. Meanwhile, in Aracajú, a team of mercenaries led by Miguel (Joventino Couto Remotigue, of Badges of Fury and SPL 2) is robbing an armored car with a box full of money. Miguel and his team work for a crime lord named Pablo Santosa (Raven Choi, of the Young and Dangerous films and Downtown Torpedoes). I guess all this is supposed to be a juxtaposition of one’s dreams of finding a paradise against the harsh reality of modern urban life anywhere, but it feels contrived.

On one of Tyler’s jobs, him and Uncle Ji’s team have to serve as bodyguards for a Mr. Hong (The Legend of Speed’s Joe Lee) at his birthday party. In attendance is Hong’s estranged daughter, Josephine (Candy Lo, of No Problem 2 and Vampire Super), and her husband, Jack (Taiwanese singer Wu Bai, who was also in Mrs. K). Josephine is pregnant, about as far along as Jo. It is suggested Mr. Hong disapproves of her marriage to Jack on account of social standings. There are rumors of an assassination attempt—Mr. Hong has some Triad connections—and it is Jack who informs Tyler of the assassins. Although Tyler thwarts the assassination attempt, Uncle Ji doesn’t see it and thinks Tyler is slacking off. Nonetheless, this is the start of a friendship between Tyler and Jack (and Josephine by extension).

It's at this point that things start to get complicated. Jack turns out to be a former mercenary from Miguel’s team. Moreover, he came to Hong Kong to “hide” the money from one of their jobs and more or less ducked out of the business. Well, Pablo Santosa and Miguel’s team are now in Hong Kong and need to shore up accounts with Jack. They give him a job: assassinate Mr. Hong (his father-in-law). He turns on Santosa and kills him instead. As Tyler and Uncle Ji were working as bodyguards for Santosa during the hit, Tyler finds himself drawn into the conflict between Jack and Miguel.

Time and Tide is weird in that it doesn’t feel like it abides by the typical three-act structure for cinematic storytelling. Instead, it almost feels like a movie in two halves. The first half establishes the numerous characters, their relationships with each other, and the external conflict involving the South American mercenaries. The second half is a running action sequence that starts at public housing estates in the To Kwa Wan district, moves into Kowloon station, and ends at Kowloon stadium. 

It is also a movie in which the main protagonist, Tyler, does very little to contribute meaningfully to the action. He really is just a poor sap who consistently finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and survives thanks a combination of luck, assistance from others, and pure moxy on his part. He is almost the Hong Kong equivalent to Jack Burton when you think about it. Nicolas Tse actually does a pretty good job in the role, even though he is less of a badass than one might expect the main character to be.

That leaves the action duties to Wu Bai, playing Jack the Mercenary. I’m guessing that Wu Bai was heavily doubled during the action sequences, which require him to rappel his way through the stairwells of apartment buildings and slide around like Sub-Zero while firing guns with frightening accuracy. The actresses, Cathy Tsui and Candy Lo, have their moments, especially the latter. Much like Double Team, the climax does involve a pregnant woman, a newborn baby, and the very danger of the baby getting killed in action. But no explosions blocked soda machines here.

The action was staged by Xiong Xin Xin, who had been collaborating with Tsui Hark ever since the days of Once Upon a Time in China. Xiong had actually done some of the fight choreography for Double Team and astute viewers may find some similarities between the action in both films. The hand-to-hand combat is limited to what I would refer to as “wire-assisted grappling.” The gunplay is stylish, but in its own way. John Woo movies tend to be stylish, full of slow-mo and astronomical body counts. Johnnie To gunplay tends to be quirky in terms of the character interactions, accentuated by dreamy, surreal touches. 

The gunplay in Time and Tide tries to balance “stylish” and “acrobatic” with “tension-building” and “suspenseful.” There are some memorable moments, like Jack and Miguel rappelling of the sides of an apartment building while firing automatic weapons at each other, or a pitched fight between two men and a woman who has just given birth over a loaded gun. There is definitely a blackly funny aspect to the action (see also the scene where the SWAT team commander warns his men about how dangerous and “heavily armed” Tyler is, despite the fact that we the viewer know he has been carrying a toy gun for most of the film).

Time and Tide has style to spare. And it tries to tell a story. And it tries to have a human side to it. But different from other classics Tsui Hark has directed, these elements tend to get in each other’s way, especially when it comes to Tyler’s relationship with his baby’s momma, Jo. I think a little more could have been done with that part of the story. But if you like over-elegant gunplay, you might enjoy this. Personally, I prefer Double Team and Knock Off.