SPL: Sha po lang (2005)

A near retired inspector and his unit are willing to put down a crime boss at all costs while dealing with his replacement, who is getting in their way. Meanwhile, the crime boss sends his top henchmen to put an end to their dirty schemes.

Director:

Wilson Yip (as Yip Wai Shun)

Writers:

Wilson Yip (as Yip Wai Shun), Kam-Yuen Szeto (as Szeto Kam Yuen)

Stars:

Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, Sammo Kam-Bo Hung

4 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Donnie Yen	...	Ma Kwan
Simon Yam	...	Chan Kwok Chung
Sammo Kam-Bo Hung	...	Wong Po (as Sammo Hung)
Jing Wu	...	Jack
Kai Chi Liu	...	Lok Kwun Wah (as Liu Kai Chi)
Danny Summer	...	Kwok Tsz Sum
Ken Chang	...	Lee Wai Lok
Austin Wai	...	Cheung Chun Fei
Timmy Hung	...	Drug Trafficker
Tat Chi Chan	...	Policeman (as Chan Tat Chee)
Jingke Liang	...	Wong Po's wife (as Liang Jing Kei)
Vincent Sze	...	Chan Wai
Kenji Tanigaki	...	Wong Po's Bodyguard
Ching-Lam Lau	...	Hoi Yee (as Lau Ching Lam)
Maggie Poon	...	Sum's Daughter (as Maggie Poon Mei Ki)

Storyline

Chan, an articulate senior detective nearing the end of his career, is taking care of the daughter of a witness killed by ruthless crime lord Po. Martial arts expert Ma is set to take over as head of the crime unit, replacing Chan who wants an early retirement.

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Plot Keywords:

martial arts | retirement | inspector | police shootout | exit wound | 

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Genres:

Action | Crime | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [Hong Kong] (English)

Country:

Hong Kong Macao

Language:

Cantonese Mandarin

Release Date:

18 November 2005 (Hong Kong)

Also Known As:

Kill Zone

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong, China

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$277,473 (Hong Kong), 18 November 2005, Limited Release

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$954,211

Company Credits

Production Co:

Abba Movies Co. Ltd., 1618 Action Limited, Greek Mythology Entertainment Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

93 min 97 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film wasn't going to be part action film at first but that changed once Donnie Yen came on-board. As the film's action director, Donnie requested additional funds in order to shoot action scenes accordingly to the story. The result became the now famous alley fight and the last fight with Jing Wu and Sammo Kam-Bo Hung respectively.

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Goofs

Despite taking place in the late-1990s, Donnie Yen plays The King of Fighters 2002: Challenge to Ultimate Battle, first released in 2002.

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Connections

Referenced in Attack of the Yakuza (2008)

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Soundtracks

The Trick
Performed by The Prodigy

User Reviews

A lean, dark bastard of a movie, SPL a stunning return to Hong Kong noir

Set to retire due to a terminal brain tumor, detective Simon Yam knows there's only one way for him and his loyal squad to deal with triad kingpin Sammo Hung and his troops: force on force. But no matter how hard they press - and they press HARD - Sammo presses back harder, and usually after he walks free when it becomes apparent Simon and his boys have violated every police procedure and human right imaginable in an effort to secure an apprehension.

When a mentally deficient A/V geek arrives at the station with a video showing Sammo teeing off on the head of Simon's undercover operative and one of his henchman finalizing the deal with a bullet to the head, Simon and his crew first beat the henchman to within an inch of his life, sending him flying off a high-rise rooftop, and then hatch a plan to edit the tape and make Sammo appear to be the killer. Of course, there's always a backup tape, and the vicious crime kingpin again walks free, this time with a master plan to wipe out Simon's unit for good.

Into this raging carnival of payback is transferred Simon's replacement Donnie, a not-quite- by-the-book hot shot whose initial protestations to the group's dark pragmatism and exclusionary procedures are rescinded after he helplessly watches one of them get slit up a treat by Sammo's snickering, psychotic blade-for-hire Jacky Wu Jing (who's hardly the "newcomer" he's being touted as by both the opening credits and the internet gossip cycle). That these two will later settle up accounts in a ferocious bout of hand-to-hand combat in the alley leading to Sammo's club is a foregone conclusion: that the fight is one of the most beautifully constructed, relentlessly exhilarating setpieces of martial arts choreography in the history of Hong Kong cinema, one that practically INVENTS new ways of kicking ass, comes as a breath of minty freshness in this era of assembly line romances and computer-assisted Jackie Chan in silly helmets.

The sequence is rivaled in short order when Donnie finally takes on the Big Man himself, virtually trashing Sammo's opulent nightclub in the process just moments after Simon's abortive last attempt to kill his archenemy buys him a series of gaping stab wounds and a Great Big Knife through his hand.

But the film isn't just about combat, phenomenal though it is; it's about consequences, and the dark decisions of the soul that, in Hong Kong movies at least, routinely resulted in cataclysm in film after film of the golden era of the 80's and 90's. The kind of movie that used to be worthy of the title Heroic Bloodshed, and a textbook exercise in escalating nihilism. No one escapes fate in SPL, not that they try very hard: combatants on both sides of the battle have tunnel vision and live only to see the other side pushing up the daisies, their own deaths often appearing as surprising to them as they are to us.

SPL feels like the movie its director, Wilson Yip, wanted to make in the mid-1990's, back when folks like Danny Lee knew the value of a hammer and a phone book in extracting confessions, so it doesn't surprise that the film is set in 1997 (a fact seemingly lost on the majority of the audience at the Toronto Film Festival where this debuted): how else to justify the "shoot-first-f***-the-questions" cocaine bust flashbacked as newly arrived Donnie quietly acquaints himself with the vacant desks of his new charges, or the sight of weary veteran Liu Kai-chi slapping around a mental retardate and trashing the poor boy's pad?

Not that the film is all bleakness. With the exception of Jacky's smirky, nutjob assassin, all the primary leads are given small vignettes that show they're firing on more than one cylinder: Simon becomes godfather to a little girl whose parents, witnesses to Sammo's dirty dealings, were killed by Jacky. Liu Kai-chi discovers the fate of his estranged father just moments before fate points his way; Donnie secretly plays video games with a mentally challenged ex-thief he clocked a little too hard; and Sammo interrupts several tense moments AND his climactic Donnie-brook to take calls from his wife, who after several failed pregnancies has finally given him a child, albeit one who will figure prominently in one of the most brutal twist endings of all time. There's more authentic characterization on display here than in any five Hong Kong action thrillers of the past few years (barring the gorgeously grim procedural of Johnny To) - not for nothing is the film set on Father's Day - a fact not lost on the likes of Yip and Yen, who must have known respective talents such as theirs, coupled with an Asian cinephile's dream cast, could only result in something truly memorable.

With little argument, this is Yip's most refined, tightly-wound effort to date, a lean, dark, unsparing bastard of a movie that melds the satiny luster of 2002, with which it shares art director Jeff Mak, with the sinewy, stripped-down plotting of BIO-ZOMBIE (minus the comedy, of course). Easily one of the best, if not THE best Hong Kong picture of 2005 so far, and I doubt the rest of the year will produce anything its equal.