Critics reviews

Those drained colors and suffocating frames prefigure a narrative of dogged pursuit that nominally celebrates police conviction but instead reveals destructive single-mindedness in law enforcement effectively tasked with a small-scale civil war. Yet the film never makes these points ostentatiously, often masking its excoriating themes under such vivid sequences as Louis Koo's kingpin lamenting his wife's death to his deaf subordinates in sign language.

When violence comes, it's not the kicky hyperbole of To's The Heroic Trio and Fulltime Killer, although To stages it with a sure sense of geography and a shitload of firepower: it's brutal, ugly, and point-blank in its refusal to spare the good guys.

It immediately dives into an intricate plot of cops and robbers already in full motion, where one drug bust in Jinhai, China, seamlessly folds into another greater narcotics pursuit. From here, the narrative billows out like the plume cloud of smoke seen in the first de-saturated frame.... [Drug War] paints Mainland China as a series of social and thematic roundabouts where citizens keep tripping over each other in glorious cinematic fashion. It's pure bliss.

To's latest film, his first produced with mainland money, shot on mainland locations, approved by mainland censors, and geared toward the mainland market, is a more mercenary affair, possessed of a severity of design and efficiency of execution bordering on the mechanical, but never less than spellbinding.

To will jump from an overhead shot to a low-angle one, from a long-shot to a close-up, or from an objective master shot to the subjective point-of-view of a surveillance camera. The constant visual bustle shows some affinities with that of the late Tony Scott, but where Scott created mosaics, To maintains a fluid sense of progression. The filmmaking is graceful, even rapturous—which seems especially remarkable given the gritty subject matter.

To's cinema is distinctly classical, with a level of craftsmanship and surface level artistry lacking in movies today. In the world of To's cops, criminals, the emphasis is not on cool violence or even the twists and turns of the narrative, no matter how pleasurable they may be, but on a sense of character and a rich and sharp visual style that links his films to a lineage of Hong Kong masters, as well as to the auteurs of Classical Hollywood...

No American remake is likely to duplicate To's relentless forward momentum or his refusal to waste time on the jokey character byplay Hollywood audiences are used to. Maybe it can simulate this movie's noirish blend of stoicism and fatalism – qualities arguably borrowed from classic American crime cinema in the first place – but there's no way in hell it will end on the same chord of cataclysmic, even nihilistic violence To strikes in "Drug War.

Much of To's recent work shares a common thread with the later films of Steven Soderbergh—a fascination with what could loosely be called "market forces"... Drug War brings to mind Soderbergh's recent Side Effects, a film defined by similar changes in perspective and genre. However, while Side Effects is best at its midpoint, before the viewer has really figured out what kind of movie it is, Drug Warbecomes both weightier and more playful with each transition, building to a harrowing finale.

Effectively a feature-length chase sequence interrupted by moments of weird comedy and interludes of savage violence, the story and its sympathies are neatly split between bad guys and good, a narrative and emotional divide that has an unsettling effect... And while Mr. To may not fill the movie with rousing speeches, either by inclination or out of political necessity, the brilliant, unsettling action scenes — ugly, savage, dehumanizing — speak volumes.

It's a relief to see an action film that prizes concision and clarity—you can keep track of everything that happens, if you pay attention—and then even goes for a classic quote fromErich von Stroheim's Greed in the end, finding in a stroke the nihilistic genre poetry that To had previously seemed too busy with practicalities to notice. You're looking at maybe this summer's only movie that won't leave you boredom-texting.

To is a calm and collected filmmaker whose roaming camera movements look at once spontaneous and perfectly considered. There are fewer violent outbursts than in past Tos, though the few — including an epic climax where no character is safe — are blood-curdling in their steely efficiency. What is there in spades are To's other usual, eccentric concerns, and his habit of sneaking bizarre lines of thinking into otherwise lean thrillers.

The genre thrills are as potent as the story's themes: As Zhang descends deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld, To expertly ratchets up the tension, even in several sequences of characters in a room talking illegal trade. All roads converge in a climactic shoot-out that is as exhilarating as it is caustic—a ballet of bullets that effectively obliterates the line separating do-gooders and devils.