On the Run (1988): Handover Anxiety Disorder on Display
An unusual femme fatale set in pre-1997 Hong Kong, it is a razor-sharp psychoanalysis of the handover melancholia shared by many in the late 1980s.
Length: 88 mins | Director: Alfred Cheung | Original title: 亡命鴛鴦
Under the backdrop of Hong Kong’s iconic neon lights, On the Run begins with a mystic murder in the evening. It then follows a wanted couple in great affliction, hunted down by corrupt cops. At first glance, it might seem to be a cliched noir story that we are so familiar and fed up with. Yet, at the hands of Cheung Kin Ting, he intelligently turned it into an action-packed social projection of handover anxiety, which has proven to age gorgeously well despite the seemingly outdated reference.
Released in 1988, it is, to say the least, a very forward-looking commercial film chiming in on the 1997 discourse. The doomsday is approaching, and Hongkongers on screen are reacting to it accordingly, almost in the most amoral sense. The inevitable retrocession is on everyone’s mind: on one hand, Heung Ming (Yuen Biao) asks his separated wife to bring him to Canada; Superintendent Lui (Charlie Chin), on the other hand, would not even hesitate to kill, just for lining his own pockets with drug money in preparation for immigration before 1997. Although Heung Ming can’t imagine himself emigrating to the Golden Triangle, leaving Hong Kong has been a recurring theme of Hong Kong films during the period. In fact, the handover perturbation is almost omnipresent in society and media, triggered by the Joint Declaration and Tiananmen massacre. In one exchange between Heung Ming and Chui Pai (Pat Ha), the line “having money is better than none” seems to have popped up out of nowhere. It is, however, an accurate reflection of the mentality of Hong Kong people at the time. Given the encroaching colonial status, the temporality of Hong Kong and the condition of extraterritoriality shared by many Hongkongers had driven them to detach themselves from the uncertainty of the city. What was left eventually is the prevalence of money worship in an attempt to fill in the void of morality.
The film meticulously manifests the handover anxiety by combining the usual genre tropes with creative settings — it was one of the very few examples of the tale of “good cops vs bad cops” at the time, in stark contrast with the ubiquitous cops and robbers plot in the 70s and 80s. Heung Ming’s decision to team up with the wife-killer is also an unprecedented breakthrough, given that it essentially subverts the genre tradition of the good/evil standoff. He, after all, is no hero: he had no desire to embroil himself in the fight between the Criminal Investigation Department and Narcotics Bureau. His willingness to exercise extrajudicial killings also highlights the moral ambiguity of the movie, which is nothing but uncommon in the Hong Kong crime film genre.
Interestingly, On the Run has made several cineliterate references to previous Hong Kong crime films. For instance, Cheung is paying tribute to Mark Gor in A Better Tomorrow (1986) where the character of Lo Lieh lit up his cigarette with banknotes in the final scene. Also, the plot reminds me of an earlier Hong Kong crime thriller Soul (1986). Both stories open with the death of a cop; then their spouses, whilst taking care of a child, were chased after by a group of killers. What sets On the Run apart is its pessimistic outlook of Hong Kong — no one can escape from their inevitable downfall and everyone is helplessly doomed.
Putting the political allegory aside, On the Run is, on the whole, a well-executed, nicely paced and watertight neo-noir plastered by the sheen of cyberpunk-like illuminated signs and highly chaotic cityscape. Most sequences happened in the night, suffusing with a kind of mystic energy amid the suspense and actions. Its use of fast editing and extreme close-up also compliments the aesthetic of the whole movie well.
In retrospect, this film is a milestone of Cheung’s career as a director. Departing from his previous comedic endeavour, it becomes his first conscious and serious directorial effort to portray the social anxiety at the time. His later and vastly more popular comedy Her Fatal Ways series blends comedic elements with poignant social satire, vividly imagining what would happen in the city after the handover given the immense cultural differences between mainland and Hong Kong. On the Run, however, is a sobering attempt to discuss the 1997 doomsday. And the tragic ending seems to be Cheung telling us: no matter if your choice was Canada, Golden Triangle or Hong Kong, the future remained to be miserably grim.
