Movie Review: PTU

Finally a movie whose Chinese title I can pronounce correctly!

PTU stands for Police Tactical Unit, a kind of flying squad designed to reinforce regular police officers on short notice.

That’s not particularly relevant to this movie, I just thought you might want to know.

The entire narrative of PTU takes place over the course of one night in Kowloon.

A cop loses his gun, and in watching the mad scramble to find it, we are introduced to a varied and fascinating cast of characters.

Lam Suet plays Lo, the unlucky cop, and Simon Yam plays Mike, the PTU leader who is trying to help him.

Tied into this search (in more ways than one) is a potential gang war caused by an assassination of a triad leader and the search for the responsible parties.

On top of that, the police investigating the gang boss’ murder are starting to get suspicious about Lo, who keeps popping up at different points of the investigation.

PTU isn’t really about the story, or about the characters.

It’s about mood and execution and both of those are excellent.

Kowloon is a pressure cooker, and under cover of darkness all kinds of interesting people and situations come together in very interesting and entertaining ways. 

The film is funny, dramatic, and occasionally quite violent.

Police officers act in shockingly criminal ways, and the criminals sometimes display a sense of honor and ethical resolve.

It’s all very entertaining. 

PTU is a ferociously stylish movie.

It’s very interesting visually and is a lot of fun not just to watch but to look at.

It’s acted very, very well, which is not a surprise given the cast.

I really appreciate the utterly black humor that the story is so full of.

I’m an awful, crass and pessimistic human being in a lot of ways, so watching movies full of people like me makes me feel better about myself.

Especially when it’s this much fun.

I don’t think you could make a movie about morally ambiguous cops nowadays; neither Lo or Mike would fit into Johhnie To’s Drug War.

Or any other movie that hoped to get any farther north than Sheung Shui.

But times change, and so do movies, and so does Hong Kong.

PTU features a lot of very recognizable places in it; the Tom Lee in TST as well as the China Cafe in Mong Kok.

This cafe also appears in Tales from the Dark and a lot of other movies.

In case you were wondering, PTU Files: Death Trap is NOT related in any way.

Sorry, Terence.