‘Moon’ Shot
Clever heist? Check. Hot pop stars? Check. Stellar work from reliable vets? Check. Welcome to your CNY diversion.
The Moon Thi4v3s
Director: Steve Yuen • Writer: Ronald Chan
Starring: Anson Lo, Edan Lui, Louis Cheung, Michael Ning
Hong Kong • 1hr 48mins
Opens Hong Kong February 9 • IIB
Grade: B+
It’s early in the year, either year, but to say The Moon Thi4v3s | 盜月者 – which if you want to do that whole number-speak thing translates into either “the moon thee-aves” or “the moon thee-four-vee-threes” and makes no sense regardless – is one of its biggest surprises is no exaggeration. Remember Paddington, a great film with a gawdawful trailer that should be taken out back and shot? The Moon Thieves (I’m not doing that number shit any more) is like that. This is a solid heist flick and entertaining holiday romp – though a dramatic one – that’s let down by its advance word.
No word of a lie, director Steve Yuen Kim-wai, who’s made just three films in eight years, channels heavy hitters like Jules Dassin’s 1955 Rififi, and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge from 1970 and filters them through a distinctly Hong Kong/Asian lens. Admittedly those film are nearly irreproachable, but the jewel heists, the tense planning, the drilling from next door, the uneasy alliance among cohorts and the timed-to-the-minute robbery the four thieves pull off recalled those French classics on a few occasions. There could be worse comparisons.
Keung To. Badass?
Believe it or not, the premise of Thieves is a real thing. Yuen and writer Ronald Chan Kin-hung (Brotherhood of Rebel) based the story on a combination of four different capers in Hong Kong and NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s missing Omega Speedmaster #43 (hence the title) – AKA the Moonwatch. Aldrin’s watch allegedly vanished en route to the Smithsonian in the early 1970s and is supposedly still unaccounted for. So this is not the craziest idea to build a heist film around given that 1) a fancy Rolex owned by actor Paul Newman sold for US$17.7 million when it was rediscovered 2017 and 2) Hongkongers love them some fancy watches. Or they at least love selling them.
Thieves starts with vintage watch enthusiast and forger Vincent (Edan Lui Cheuk-on, Chilli Laugh Story), swindling a cocky investor out of several dollars and then running into the same investor at Lai Bo, a famous Hong Kong watch dealer/bandit. He’s been summoned by Uncle (a terribly, terribly miscast Keung To, Mama’s Affair). Uncle’s taken over his father’s theft business and possibly his shiny trench coat, and he promptly ropes Vincent into a complicated robbery in Tokyo. Seems three missing watches once owned by Picasso are up for auction and he wants them. What follows is the requisite heist movie construction: Uncle’s main lieutenant, Chief (Louis Cheung Kai-chung), assembles a crew, which includes Vincent, who’s more interested in the watches’ provenance than the money they’re worth, and his obsession is the Moonwatch; Yoh (Anson Lo Hon-ting, It Remains), who comes from a family of safecrackers; and Mario (the film’s runaway star Michael Ning, Port of Call, The Goldfinger), the explosives expert. Things go sideways when the Moonwatch turns up in the auction house’s safe. Cue heist, cue close calls, cue double crosses etc and so forth.
Just because Yuen and Chan stick to the rules of the game doesn’t mean they’re not having fun tailoring the story to Hong Kong and Tokyo’s unique foibles. Thieves is surprisingly dramatic; it’s not a wacky romp à la Ocean’s Eleven, nor is it a straight up cops and robbers thriller. For starters there are no cops. The action pivots on the uneasy quartet as they slowly come to trust each other (of course), and forge their own paths. Yuen deftly directs around the performances that unfortunately fall flat (To’s baby face simply isn’t threatening) and leans into the ones that would otherwise simply be “fine”. Lui and Lo are more convincing than To, but Yuen wisely positions both characters as out of their depth and so props up the narrative while he’s at it. Cheung and Ning do the heavy lifting, making the three MIRRORs look good (well, two) and injecting the story with some real emotion. When Chief tries to recruit Yoh’s mother, the personal friction is the right kind of awkward (props to Luna Shaw/Siu Mei-kwan as Mrs Hong), Right now no one can touch Cheung for downtrodden dude overwhelmed by regret. Ning gives Mario a simmering fury that makes him the weak link as well as the backbone of the group.
I talk a lot about films that play like throwbacks to Hong Kong’s glory days of the 1980s and ’90s but The Moon Thi4v3s actually fits that bill and it’s the laser focus on the four thieves that does it. It’s not perfect; there are a few “Da fuq?” moments, but Yuen exploits the tight spaces for maximum tension, and timing a tunnel blast to a fireworks display and the key robbery are both genuinely stressful. Above all Thieves earns its cathartic finale despite the familiarity of the machinations that get us there. Hey, I’m as surprised as you are. — DEK