Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: TIME [International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021 - Summer -Virtual]

The aspect of age and time affects everyone. How are we seen or how do people remember who we were? That is the progression of "Time" [Harbour/European Premiere] which shows that for the Hong Kong sect in a very interesting way. Patrick Tse who was a matinee idol with a bit of martial arts fame as well leads the older cast. Now he is 84 years old but his presence on screen undeniable. Think Clint Eastwood in "The Mule". He is a bad ass who is stuck in his ways, especially when the job h has been doing for many years (a noodle maker) has become obsolete because of new technology. The director Ricky Ko does an interesting pirouette in that he begins the film with an interesting sequence so people can understand who these three characters were. One was a getaway driver that now lives in his van. Another was a cabaret owner with side hustles in a massage parlor. And the lead is a former assassin with a very specific weapon.

This kind of narrative is an interesting progression of film recently, probably related to the reflective existential nature of the boomers and how they look at the new generation. That is essentially the story here. Said assassin who has only had to sustain himself finds something to care about that he didn't think he needed or wanted. It is a subtle performance in a way but it only woks if the young lady playing his would-be granddaughter is so annoying that her buoyancy has to have a tragedy lying beneath it that can rise to the surface. That aspect of purpose filters through all the characters and perceptions play a large part. The getaway driver and his understanding that he is no longer a young man is really well done in his viewpoint when he visits a women of the night. The way that relationship is played is both tender but yet transactional and distant.

The reverse is true in a certain way of the cabaret owner who watches as she is considered a pariah by her son and his wife when she provided everything for them. There are a few sequences where director Ricky Ko shows glimpses of who these people were (and still are). Granted there is some melodrama but not much. While this is not "Kung Fu Hustle" and is made on a much leaner budget there is a sense of accomplishment and resolve and yet one of impending gloom at the same time. Of course, an assassin popping bubbles coming from the next room of his bubbly ward singing herself to sleep that brings a small curve of a smile to his face are the minute details that fuel the story and make it undeniably human yet never boring. B

By Tim Wassberg