3 of the best Hong Kong crime films of the 2000s and how director Derek Yee created them

The characters – police officers and criminals – are portrayed in a naturalistic way and express the concerns of real people. The violence also avoids any stylized form of whitewashing – it is brutal and repulsive.

The triad films of the 1990s were criticized for glorifying gang life, but A night in Mongkok does just the opposite. The lives of criminals are portrayed as grim and dirty, and Yee dispenses with all three “codes of honor” that usually permeate such works.

Yee’s underworld is a place where violence and fear are the means of control, friendships mean nothing, and the weak are forced into submission through physical beatings.

According to Yee, the story was based on true events. “A few years ago, a police officer from the criminal investigation department told me that police officers in police films were too far removed from reality,” Yee told Tim Youngs of the Udine Far East Film Festival.

The police officer told Yee a story about how the police tried to track down a hitman who had come to Hong Kong to kill a triad boss, but they could not find any trace.

A chance encounter at a 7-Eleven store led to the assassin’s arrest. “They found him by chance. That’s what interested me,” Yee said. “That’s how the film started.”

“Mong Kok is chaotic at night and has a lot of triads,” Yee said of the film’s location. “Triads go there because business is good. But in real life, Mong Kok is not that scary and the triads are not that scary. We exaggerated it so that people in Hong Kong would be convinced by the story.”

2. Protégé (2007)

As in A night in MongkokYee focused on drama rather than action in the undercover cop story protegeHe described the film as a film that simply aims to show that “drugs are evil”; there is only one full-scale action sequence, and even that is central to the plot rather than an attempt to create suspense.

“Considered a master at breathing new life into dying genres, writer-director Derek Yee brings a keen sense of dramatic and commercial realities to this highly ethical but undidactic look at the drug trade and its impact on a disparate group of users, dealers and cops,” said the Post’s review in 2007.

Daniel Wu, one of Yee’s favorite actors, plays Nick, a cop who goes undercover to take down the drug smuggling network of crime boss Quin (Andy Lau Tak-wah). Nick is so deeply involved in Quin’s business that the drug lord has named him his heir and is training him to take over after his retirement.

Nick plays his undercover role as deputy crime boss with full commitment, but when he meets Fan (Zhang Jingchu), a heroin addict who wants to kick the habit so she can care for her young child, he becomes increasingly disgusted by Quin’s drug trafficking.

Nick’s disgust is further heightened when he and Quin take a trip to the poppy farms in Thailand, where he witnesses his family enjoying a royal holiday at the expense of the suffering of addicts like Fan.

To make his film credible, Yee conducted extensive research into drug trafficking and met with addicts, dealers and members of the drug squad.

“You really have to find [the truth] “I’m a person who moves in all sorts of areas of life. You dig up stories from contacts, books and so on. That’s my passion,” he told the Post.

3. Triple Tap (2010)

Yee made the crime thriller Triple tap in 2010 and described himself to the Post at the time as still in his “soapbox” phase. He said he felt a duty to explain the problems of Hong Kong society to viewers, and that credo applied to action films as well as dramas.

“You have Triple tap as a fast-paced heist film, and the action begins with a deadly robbery of a security van carrying a fortune in bonds,” wrote Clarence Tsui of the Washington Post in 2007. “But the director says he also wanted to emphasize that money is, ultimately, power.”

Triple tapa loose sequel to the 2000 film Double tap, A film Yee wrote for director Law Chi-leung, it’s a straightforward work and he sticks to the well-known rules of the genre. The result is a highly effective psychodrama that pushes all the right buttons.

When he returns home from a shooting competition, he witnesses an armored car being attacked. As a good citizen, he pulls out his gun, kills the armed robbers and saves an injured motorcycle policeman.

The press celebrates Kwan as a hero, but investigator Jerry Chang (Daniel Wu) unexpectedly puts him on trial for murder. Kwan is acquitted, but it turns out that Chang’s suspicions about the true motive of his “civic duty” were correct.

Yee’s observation that money and power corrupt even the most distinguished among us is hardly original, but the idea is still strongly advocated Triple tap.

In this regular feature series on the best films of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, reassess the careers of their biggest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry.