As Tears Go By
Director: Wong Kar-Wai
Year Released: 1988
Rating: 1.0
Wong's style is on display for his manic first feature, a goofy by-the-numbers crime movie rife with overacting and hammy dialogue (did he use a script for this? or was it impromptu like his later and more famous work?). There are touches of his romanticism in the relationship between Andy Lau's character and Maggie Cheung's (she plays his cousin), but that story thread is lost behind the gratuitous violence, masculine taunting and shouting matches. It's disposable except when looking at the shape of Wong's career; fans of his later work are required to watch simply to see where he started (the same way Kubrick devotees should pry their eyes open and see Killer's Kiss and Fear and Desire).
