TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, Well Go USA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 8, 2024

The Kowloon Walled City was a real place for over a century within Hong Kong. With a non-existent system of laws and government, it became a hotbed of crime and gangs, with a population mostly made up of refugees following World War II. It's a place of infamy in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, but that also makes it a place of legend, which the filmmakers take to an unexpected but logical end of some fantasy.

Here, then, is a melodrama about warring factions, longtime alliances, sudden betrayals, and hidden identities. If the storytelling is going to exist at that heightened level, director Soi Cheang decides that the whole of the film, especially the many and compelling action sequences, should probably attempt to match or exceed it. This isn't a history lesson, after all, although the re-creation of the city itself, modeled after photographs and stories from Greg Girard's book City of Darkness, is so convincing that the film almost always feels like a tour through a slice of the past.

The story itself comes in some part from Yuyi's comic series of the same name as Girard's book, which might also explain why the stunt-and-action sequences give the heroes and especially one villain the martial arts equivalent of superpowers. There's a long tradition of such stylistic stunt work in martial arts movies, of course, and some of that history is represented in the casting of Cheang's film, too.

There are young Hong Kong actors among the cast of the new generation of outlaws in the city, but also present are veterans of the industry as the leaders in that eponymous twilight. Louis Koo and Richie Jen might be recognizable to some outside of Hong Kong, but the third gang leader of the trio of eventually fighting factions is played by Sammo Hung, whose name at least should be known to anyone with even a minor awareness of Hong Kong action movies.

In other words, everything here, even the casting, feels as if it possesses some import in terms of how this story is being told. It's the kind of smart and self-aware filmmaking that we don't always get to see in a genre exercise that is, essentially, a staging ground for assorted fights.

That story, set in the late 1980s, is nothing to dismiss as a meager excuse, though. It revolves around refugee Chan Lok-kwan (Raymond Lam), who finds himself in the Walled City after seeking a fake ID card from Mr. Big (Hung), being betrayed by the crime boss, unintentionally stealing a bag of the criminal's cocaine (He thinks it's full of money), and having to run away from Big's right-hand man King (Philip Ng). King, by the way, seems an ordinary henchman at first, but his defensive skills are of the variety that bring the material's comic origins to the forefront.

After failing to sell the cocaine in the city, Lok catches the attention of Cyclone (Koo), the closest person the Walled City has to a leader and only recognized arbitrator of law there. Skeptical of the newcomer initially, Cyclone finds sympathy for the loner without any family or friends and brings him into the fold of his crew.

There is almost too much going on in the film to fully mention, from the background information of the present tale and the past back stories of its assorted players to the backdrop of the expansive city. From the outside, the Walled City looks like some kind of urban fortress (It was a Chinese fort originally)—a few city blocks of tall buildings like defensive walls. Inside, it's a crowded, bustling place, where there seem to be only dark alleys and traversable rooftops, people go about their daily lives in scattered businesses and apartments within the interior edifices, and everything is stacked upon everything else in a veritable maze of stairs, gates, and pathways.

For some of the action, the layout is vital, such as an early chase scene that has Lok trying to avoid Cyclone's right-hand guy Shin (Terrance Lau), who knows all the shortcuts and eventually becomes one of the newcomer's handful of friends. The others come from Cyclone's gang, such as the scarred and masked AV (German Cheung), or from others, such as Twelfth Master (Tony Wu), but their alliance is deeper than gang affiliation—especially when it's put to the test.

The plot involves Lok's true identity, which is discovered by the vengeance-seeking Chau (Jen), a triad leader whose family was murdered decades ago when the Walled City was even more lawless and run by a brutal crime boss—before Cyclone, Chau, and Uncle Tiger (Kenny Wong) united to defeat the de facto dictator in a fearsome battle within the city. The film makes no apologies for its melodramatic leanings—nor should it, when the screenplay (by Au Kin-yee, Shum Kwan-sin, Chan Taili, and Lai Chun) is this intricate and Cheang's sense of tone is confident. The various conflicts of the past and the present give every fight some genuine reason to happen.

Those fights are often thrilling, too, as the players dish out and take crushing punishment, while also occasionally defying the laws of physics (flying kicks and crashing through concrete walls) and the basics of human anatomy ("spirit powers" preventing stab wounds and surviving those crushed walls without broken bones). Cheang stages and shoots the sequences with cohesion and a real appreciation for the stunt work on display. That the action has real stakes within the story, based on the desires and desperation of its characters and their sometimes decades-old conflicts, means something here, as well.

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is imbued with a lot of stylish action, to be sure. In its layered story and depiction of a lost place from history, the film has some substance to go along with it.

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