X
- 1996
- PG-13
- Miramax
- 1 h 42 m
- 1996
- PG-13
- Miramax
- 1 h 42 m
Summary Wong Kar-Wai's movie about two love-struck cops is filmed in impressionistic splashes of motion and color. The first half deals with Cop 223, who has broken up with his girlfriend of five years. He purchases a tin of pineapples with an expiration date of May 1 each day for a month. By the end of that time, he feels that he will either be...
Directed By: Kar-Wai Wong
Written By: Kar-Wai Wong
- 1996
- PG-13
- Miramax
- 1 h 42 m
- 1996
- PG-13
- Miramax
- 1 h 42 m
Chungking Express
78
8.3
Summary Wong Kar-Wai's movie about two love-struck cops is filmed in impressionistic splashes of motion and color. The first half deals with Cop 223, who has broken up with his girlfriend of five years. He purchases a tin of pineapples with an expiration date of May 1 each day for a month. By the end of that time, he feels that he will either be...
Directed By: Kar-Wai Wong
Written By: Kar-Wai Wong
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 Critic Reviews
78
83% Positive
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
17% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 Critic Reviews
78
83% Positive
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
17% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Chungking Express ravishingly, seductively exudes the immediacy of everyday life as its spins its classically timeless tales of love lost and almost regained.
The performances here are irresistible, thrilling in their invention and spontaneity, as is the mind-blowing, urgent cinematography of frequent Wong collaborator Christopher Doyle, which makes the most of Hong Kong's neon-drenched streets and cramped interior spaces.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 96 User Ratings
8.3
89% Positive
85 Ratings
85 Ratings
7% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
4% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 96 User Ratings
8.3
89% Positive
85 Ratings
85 Ratings
7% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
4% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
What a winner! I'm so sorry I never got around to seeing this until now. Faye Wong is delightful; truly the Chinese version of the manic pixie dream girl (if you didn't realize it, that's her covering The Cranberries Dreams). She can break in my house any time!
I have to admit the first story was slow for me and it took me time to follow what the intent was (is it a thriller? or a romantic comedy? or both?), but it really took off in the second half. It hit all the right notes for me and looked sumptuous.
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clearly one of the most influential asian movie of the 90s, having to capture the life of 90's Hong Kong the most elegant way and the romance is flourishing with natural scent, also to put that on top with blue-ish beautiful cinematography.
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This is filmmaking of high energy and wit. What it adds up to is debatable. You can view it as a bright twist on the being-a-cop-is-lonely sort of police picture, or as a mini-anthology of quirky not-quite-love stories. If it's hard to say where Chungking Express arrives, the trip is still exhilarating.
Despite its fragmentary, seat-of-the-pants plot, Chungking Express abounds with staccato style and frenetic charm. It's the cinematic equivalent of popcorn on a hot stove. There are "jump-cut" shots, freeze frames, stirring (and often beautiful) images and a general sense of boundless energy, all of which capture perfectly the Zeitgeist of Hong Kong society. [15 Mar 1996, p.N43]
A lyrical and delightfully goofy study in romantic longing.
Overall, Wong’s movie doesn’t leave as big a wash behind it as the more ambitious “Days” and his “Mean Streets”-like debut, “As Tears Go By,” but it’s an enjoyable cruise.
For all Wong's energy and virtuosity, the relentless stylishness and whimsicality of Chungking Express become irritating. The cast is appealing -- particularly the forlorn young cops. But the velocity of Wong's attack seems out of proportion to the airy, lightweight quality of the stories.
I never thought that a movie that explores loneliness would end up being one of the most charming feel-good movies I've ever seen! I mean... I was smiling and laughing spontaneously, and that didn't happen to me since I watched Amélie!
(9/10)
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A truly sad and depressing film, Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express is an exploration of loneliness, focused in on two men looking for love in the past in Hong Kong. Showing how one can be distressed and left hurt by looking to the past and waiting for it to change, Chungking Express features characters that are so incredibly real, the emotion they communicate cannot be ignored.
With incredibly written dialogue, Chungking Express brings its two lonely men to life with lines that absolutely touch your soul. For example, one describes how a girl who wished him a happy birthday will live on in his memories forever, only to then wonder when a memory expires. Lines such as these will overcome inadequacies in the film as a whole, as they transcend the medium. Instead, it makes the experience feel incredibly real and authentic. Wong Kar-wai's film may feel as though it is occurring at a distance from the audience, but lines such as these make the film realize that there is no distance at all. This is not a romance film, rather it is one about lost love and the pain it can cause. As such, it is an incredibly cold film, but not emotionless.
Stylistically, the film uses a ton of hand-held camera, if not solely hand-held. The end result is a kinetic and chaotic experience that highlights the loneliness of its protagonists. As the city and even their lives (as cops) run around hectically, their love life and home life remain empty and filled with solitude. It is always lovely when a director's style matches some element of the film and offers its own thematic elements. This is very much the case with Chungking Express. Additionally, the film is just simply very well shot. Hand-held cameras can be quite nauseating and annoying when noticeable, yet Chungking Express deftly avoids these trappings and instead utilizes the style effectively. Essentially, it is supposed to put you into the scene. The camera does this here, but certainly not always.
A thoroughly melancholy and moving experience, Chungking Express will make you feel its characters loneliness in a very human way that will more than likely break your heart. Both this and In the Mood for Love (the other Wong Kar-Wai film I have seen), both have this quality that make you think they will be a romance film and certainly play out like a romance film should, but they are anything but romance films. Rather, they are explorations of love and what it does to a person once they feel it and how they feel when it is ripped out of their clutches.
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Filmed into the post production of two years of filming the Wuxia epic "Ashes of Time", with low resources, this movie is another example that we don't need millions of USD to make a masterpiece.Wong Kar-Wai have a personal style of using melancholic characters distorted stories, using elaborate soundtracks in the background. This movie show two drama and crime stories about two lovesick policeman and their search over his relationship with a woman, always in a 0,01cm encounter of distance between them. The first story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as a cop obsessed by his breakup with a woman named May (replaced emotionally with letters and old pineapple cans), and his encounter with a mysterious drug smuggler. The second stars Tony Leung as a police officer roused from his gloom over the loss of his flight attendant girlfriend by the attentions of a quirky snack bar worker called Express - referred in the title (Faye Wong).Both stories circles around Chungking Mansions, a 60's complex of buildings supposed to be residential, but that is made up of many independent low-budget hotels, shops and other services, filled with stores and stalls in the building cater to wholesalers shipping goods to Africa and South Asia, and amid the gigantic Central–Mid-Levels escalator with a length of 800m and one of the two highlights locations of the movie.Both sequences have a unique visual approach sometimes intimate, sometimes frenetic with a beautiful use of color among the chaos that reminds me of the works of the photographer Saul **** the unique soundtrack using ocidental musics we have the use for the first story is Dennis Brown's "Things in Life" and "Baroque", composed by Michael Galasso, can be heard twice during the first part of the **** the second "California Dreamin'" by The Mamas & the Papas plays in the key scenes in the second story, which also features Faye Wong's Cantonese cover version of "Dreams" by The **** the plans of making there was a third movie but since it was too long it was released as a separate movie, Fallen Angels in 1995.Another must watch classic with a unique style that differentiates it from other Hong Kong productions - I gave it a 8,7 out of 10,0 / A rate.
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I didnt see any sense in this movie: The story is weird, starts criminal and evolves to have stupid love story with weird and boring characters. The California song gets annoying after some time.
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Je l'avais vu il y a longtemps et j'avais trouvé ça cucul et concon... Avec le temps, en vérité ça ne s'est pas arrangé et ce Chungking sonne bien creux et encore plus bidon qu'auparavant, ses défauts nous sautant au visage de façon extrêmement flagrante... Surtout que seule la moitié du film est regardable, à savoir la seconde histoire...
La première histoire se borne à nous faire suivre la Miss "lunettes de soleil" qui tire la gueule et trafique de la poudre avec des immigrés indiens avant de se faire elle-même poursuivre par un jeune premier qu'on met un certain temps à reconnaître... le plus chinois des acteurs japonais, Takeshi Kaneshiro ! c'était encore un débutant à l'époque.
La seconde histoire voit un flic incarné par l'excellent et déjà connu Tony Leung, poursuivi à l'insu de son ignorance par l'employée d'une gargotte qui n'écoute que de la musique de merde. Cette musique pourrie est d'ailleurs répétée à l'envi et quasiment en boucle et vrille bien les nerfs comme il faut... comme un leitmotiv romanesque d'une lourdeur sans commune mesure.
Si ce jeu du chat et de la souris est déjà nettement plus mignon -certains diront poétique ?- vu que le flic déconvenu et plaqué par son hôtesse de l'air parle aux objets- il n'en reste pas moins pataud et trop chiant pour espérer convaincre. Finalement, on a donc une moitié de film totalement ratée et une autre très nunuche qui nous les casse. Quel échec !
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Awards
Hong Kong Film Awards
• 4 Wins & 10 Nominations
Golden Horse Film Festival
• 1 Win & 8 Nominations
Stockholm Film Festival
• 2 Wins & 3 Nominations
