The first trailer for City of DarknessSoi Cheang’s fighting film, has just been revealed and it’s going to hurt.
Soi Cheang made a strong impression in France with the excellent Limbo in 2021, which is why we were inevitably wondering what he was going to offer us next (even if we are still waiting for the hypothetical release of Mad Fateproduced in 2023). When we learned that the Hong Kong director was going to return with a martial arts film called City of Darkness, we could only be extremely curious, especially since the project was announced during the midnight screening at the next Cannes Film Festival.
Precisely, the first trailer for City of Darkness was recently unveiled by its distributor Metropolitan, and it will allow us to better understand its exciting promise.
City of Darkness, fights in misery
Three sentences during these 56 seconds of trailer, and they resonate with all the more force: “I’m warning you. Don’t cause trouble. Troublemakers die.”. Here, we’re not here to mess around, and we feel that. Moreover, the two main themes that we find in this almost minute are far from joyful. The fighting will be violent, and poverty will be an integral part of the setting, and therefore of the subject of the film.
City of Darkness, it is therefore the adaptation of a manhua by Andy Seto, namely a comic book in Chinese, similar to Japanese manga. The author initially sought to depict life in Kowloon City and its slums, and this is what emerges from Cheang’s staging. The trailer thus presents bloody and brutal clashes within the walls of this poverty-stricken, but at the same time magnificent, city. We can also find certain similarities with what the director offered us with Limboin which he filmed Hong Kong in a particularly dirty way.
Dirt and bastards go hand in hand
Beyond these themes, these images of City of Darkness also refer to the expression of the death of Hong Kong cinema, mainly at the political level in relation to China. As a genre film, it is difficult not to think of the classics of martial arts cinema, and by extension of the disappearance of the authors of the Hong Kong scene, Soi Cheang stands out more than ever as one of its last artisans.
This is perhaps also why the film has a well-rounded cast, notably with Louis Koo (Paradox), Terrance Lau (Beyond the Dream) or the legend Sammo Hung, who among other things appeared in numerous feature films with Jackie Chan. We also find John Chong and Wilson Yip on production.
It’s going to be difficult
All this added to the overall aesthetic of the film and the choreography of the fights, and we risk finding ourselves facing a great martial arts film, which we hope is critical of the state of Hong Kong cinema and its times. However, we will have to wait a little longer to be sure. City of Darkness being scheduled to be released on September 4.
