Time is part-affecting drama and part-oddball black comedy about neglected senior citizens that features strong performances from its three leads: Patrick Tse, Petrina Fung and Lam Suet.
Chau, a retired mob assassin notorious for his quick knife in the sixties, now slices noodles in a restaurant stall.
Let go from his job, Chau seeks out his two previous partners-in-crime, including Chung, the once getaway driver who now drives a delivery van and in love with a young prostitute, and Fung, the once contract manager who now runs an old nightclub and is being pressured by her son to sell her property.
Feeling neglected as senior citizens, the old trio proceed to restart their assassin business. The clientele ironically consists of other neglected senior citizens who wished to be euthanised, which the trio begin to profit from performing mercy killings.
First-time director Ricky Ko does a solid job balancing the tone between the black comedy and the emotional drama in Gordon Lam and Ching-Yi Ho's quirky script. It is deceptively heartwarming.
The black comedy does not produce thigh-slapping laughs. It evokes a strong sense of irony that embodies the film's message: old people often are forgotten and neglected. This casts a looming sadness over the three characters that makes the audience to care and root for them. We hope they all come out okay.
Patrick Tse, internationally most well known as the villain from Shaolin Soccer and pop star Nicolas Tse's father, delivers a refined minimal performance as mob assassin Chau.
The film draws on Tse's image as a famed longtime leading man, deconstructing the archetypal image of a Hong Kong movie gangster hero. What if these movie gangsters were real and got old one day? What would happen to him?
Tse does a great job portraying Chau's inner monologue. As a practiced man of action, he doesn't speak much and now as an old man, he doesn't know what to say and is incapable of asking for help.
Oozing movie coolness and occasionally spouting movie gangster dialogue to no desired response, the Chau character is ultimately an archetype whose function is to lead the audience into its story through movie language and genre conventions. As good as Tse is in his role, it rests like a statue and stands posed over the other two lead performances that were more dramatically engaging.
Petrina Fung and Lam Suet are the heart of the piece as their stories were much more relatable on a human level.
It's gut-wrenching to watch Petrina Fung's mother character being guilted and bullied by her son and daughter-in-law into selling her own property, which is a more common occurrence than I would like to think.
Lam Suet, has perhaps landed his best dramatic role yet in Time, showcasing an emotional range he's never had the chance to do that tugs at the heartstrings.
Time will expectedly receive a lot of much-deserved attention come Hong Kong awards season and I expect it would be nominated for the three performances, screenplay and best film.
