Election (2005)

★★
Prolific Hong Kong director Johnnie To juggles a large cast of characters set against the backdrop of the Triad societies in Election, a fast-paced yet convoluted story that nearly sinks under the weight of so many gangsters vying for screen time. I watched the movie twice. The first time I was really confused on who was who. A second viewing cleared things up, but not enough to get a firm grasp of who was working for whom. This is a story that would have greatly benefited by having its cast trimmed down. It is absolutely possible for a movie to feature many characters. Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, which has nothing to do with Election, except as an example of how a story can feature a lot of actors who weave in and out of the narrative as it progresses.

There are two parties at play here. There is Lok (Simon Yam), a level-headed candidate and favorite to succeed Whistle (Chung Wang) as the new chairman of one of Hong Kong's many Triad criminal organizations. The other candidate is Big D (Tony Ka Fai Leung, whom Western audiences might remember from The Lover), an impatient gangster who tries to bribe his way to the top. Lok and Big D have an assortment of henchmen faithful to them, and during the course of the movie, they will pit their resources against each other first for the chairman position, and secondly for a baton that signifies the chairman of the Triad.

Lok wins the election in the first act, which enrages Big D to the point that he abducts two other Triad senior leaders and nails them in boxes before throwing them down a steep cliff several times. He demands the baton, which Whistle had hidden just across the border in China. Lok and Big D send their servants after the baton. Chief Superintendent Hui (David Chiang), who becomes aware of the aftermath of the election, arrests Lok, Big D and other key players of the Triad and wants the feuding members to call a truce, lest an all-out war break out amongst the competing factions and plunge Hong Kong into chaos.

This much of the plot I was able to piece together after two viewings, but what an ordeal it was. Alliances seem to shift abruptly and without explanation, to the point that as the chase for the baton played out, I was never sure where some of the gangsters were aligned. The baton exchanges hands several times. In one such exchange, it appeared that one gangster attacked another gangster, even though I believe they were actually on the same side and both working for the same person. I'd like to think that career criminals such as these could better manage their subordinates, but I don't know.

Election lacks the wild gunplay of the best Hong Kong action movies. This is a more restrained effort from Johnnie To. Perhaps he was trying to de-emphasize action to produce a movie that focused more on characterization. That is an admirable thing to do, but he misfired. The story moves quickly because there are many moving parts. It's just a matter of identifying who these moving parts are and where they stand. Many characters sport names like Dead Dog, Cocky, Big Head, Long Gun and Fish Head. I have no clue if these are direct translations from the Cantonese names. I watched with English subtitles, and the result was confusion, since these names are completely interchangeable, contributing to why I had trouble keeping track of who was onscreen (Is that Sparky or Blacky speaking?). It's too bad. A clearer picture of who was allied with Lok and Big D would have helped things immensely.

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