Killer and Undercover

This great short etude was made to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Hong Kong Baptist University, from which established screenwriter and now fledgling director Lau Ho-Leung graduated with a degree in film directing. Like the other entries in the HKBU 60th Anniversary Celebrations 6x10 Short Films project (a compilation of all of the anniversary shorts can be found here), his short contains the motifs of nostalgia and reminiscing about his student years. But instead of the literal pathos and retrospective sentimentality of the other filmmakers, he manages to mould these motifs into an entertaining narrative that inventively reflects the director’s own love of cinema. In just ten minutes, Killer & Undercover pays homage not only to specific films and names of Hong Kong cinema (including the casting of director Patrick Tam in one of the two roles), but also to its iconic genres, characters and specific narrative formulas. As a result, the encounter between the killer and the undercover cop in the iconic red taxi unfolds according to the rules of unpredictable coincidence and plays with nostalgia like the best Hong Kong films of the new millennium. In the context of Lau’s upcoming feature film Caught in Time, in which we find many echoes of the motifs from Killer & Undercover, albeit buried under the silt of submission to the Chinese market, this short is distinctly bittersweet as a reminder of the original and creative exuberance of Hong Kong cinema, which unfortunately is now a thing of the past. (2021.10.10)