The romantic (and likely mistranslated) title says a lot about this busy but empty underworld drama, in which the false glamour of crime and punishment is dressed up with plenty of teenage angst and no shortage of cosmetic style. The lack of any larger then life heroics (so common in Hong Kong action epics) is refreshing at first, but after a while the mean street poses and back alley beatings all begin to look alike, although the physical violence is, apparently, more punishing to watch than to receive, since nobody is disabled for longer than a scene or two. Never mind the mechanics of the actual plot, following a self-reliant young hood forced to risk his small empire to protect a reckless, troublemaking 'brother'; the general thrust of the narrative is slanted more toward the martyrdom so dear to an alienated, lovelorn teenage rebel's heart. Legible subtitles (and a better Cantonese-English dictionary) might have made an improvement.
Review of As Tears Go By
