On its face, “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” is a conventional us-against-them crime saga about Chan Lok-kwun (Raymond Lam), a luckless refugee who settles down in Kowloon, the dystopian-looking tenement city of the movie’s title. Chan’s allies treat each other like family despite some mischievous double-dealing and back-biting; his enemies only think of themselves.
Chan’s story, all about a community’s triumph over mobbed-up individualism, has already found a receptive audience in Hong Kong, where “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” is already the most-watched local production of all time. The movie’s reputation will likely continue to grow thanks to its lyrical pulp fiction dialogue, credited to four screenwriters, and its over-the-top fight choreography. “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” was custom-made to knock you on your ass, and while it’s sometimes a little too desperate to please, it’s also hard to resist a genre movie that works so hard to impress all comers.
The movie version of Kowloon resembles an animated M.C. Escher painting, filled with overlapping stairwells, choked with rebar, and overstuffed with low-drooping cables that bulge and creep over steam vents and crater-pocked concrete. Paint doesn’t peel off the walls so much as it accretes, one eggshell-thin layer on top of the other. Steam floats above the aluminum eaves but never seems to escape.
This movie’s Kowloon is a haven for kind-hearted degenerates like Cyclone (Koo), a barber and the city’s revered crime boss, as well as supporting characters like the media-obsessed AV (German Cheung) and his stalwart companions Twelfth Master (Tony Tsz-Tung Wu) and Shin (Terrance Lau). Their messy but stable microcosm is threatened by Chan, a desperate loner who only wants to make enough money to buy a fake ID. Chan is followed by the greedy triad gang boss, Mr. Big (Hung), and his flamboyant second-in-command, King (Philip Ng). Everybody knows how to fight and they all have garish wigs and costumes that scream mid-to-late ‘80s.
Most of the first half of “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” sets up the inevitable clash between Mr. Big and Cyclone’s respective gangs. There’s a little mystery surrounding Chan’s identity, but it’s not as memorable as the movie’s action scenes, which feature the sort of manic energy that one might expect from a comic book movie. In an early scene, Cyclone flicks his cigarette into the air, executes some disarming moves, and then reclaims his butt before gravity can. This sort of fantastic establishing scene prepares viewers for later fights, including maneuvers like a “spirit shield” and beat-em-up video game-ready weapons like sledgehammers and lead pipes.