From the beginning, it explains that this is not your typical heroic bloodshed Triad film, concerned more with codes of honor and brotherhood and the mirroring of good and evil than anything else. No, instead this is going to be a straight police procedural, with no metaphysical mumbo jumbo: "You're a drug dealer, I'm a cop. I didn't betray you, I busted you," explains Sun Honglei's Captain Zhang, and with that 25 years (at least) of Hong Kong genre convention, from John Woo's A Better Tomorrow and The Killer to To's own cop/Triad movies (Breaking News, PTU, Mad Detective, etc) is summarily dismissed.
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A major Johnnie To film, perhaps his most epic in scope. Makes the third part of two trilogies: on modern HK criminal gangs and their relations with the PRC with the Election movies, and on the teamwork and professionalism of cops with Expect the Unexpected and PTU.
Also, it is To's Tarantino film: structured as a series of conversations, with one of the parties pretending to be someone else, with a build-up and diffusion of tension until a final burst…