This is a tough hero film with a very soft heart. Return Engagement represents the high point of Alan Tang's late career, which he produced with his company In-Gear and also starred in, playing a former gang boss who returns to Hong Kong from Canada to search for his lost daughter. The film is marked by not only fist fights, gun battles and gangland politics but also a tender relationship between the boss and his daughter's friend, a teen girl with a giant attitude. The script by director Joe Cheung and an un-credited Wong Kar-wai brilliantly uses genre conventions as storytelling shortcuts to the complex emotions, including a remarkable gag at once funny and dramatic, involving hair gel and future superstar Andy Lau.

17/6

(Fri)

11:00am *

Cinema, Hong Kong Film Archive

* Post-screening talk with Joe Cheung