Triangle review

Three main characters and three tightly interwoven plot strands – and that’s just the first third of Triangle, made by Tsui Hark with a frenetic pace to match its convolutions of cause and effect, before director Ringo Lam picks up the ball for the next section.

Spurred into action by a mysterious man, three cash-strapped drinking buddies – Fai (Louis Koo), Lee (Simon Yam) and Mok (Sun Honglei) – execute a plot to break into a tunnel beneath Hong Kong’s Legislative Council to steal a hidden treasure chest.

At the same time, Lee’s wife Ling (Kelly Lin) tells her lover, the cop Wen (Lam Ka Tung), that her impotent husband is plotting to kill her. Meanwhile, triple-dealing Fai struggles to keep his involvement with Wen and some Triad gangsters separate from his friends.

Characters and chronology remain the same, but the mood is now darker, and there is a new privileging of psychology over action as the bizarre love triangles between Lee, Ling and Wen (not to mention Lee, Ling and Ling’s dead first wife) come into noirish focus.

Then, an hour in, director Johnnie To takes over – and so does a sense of what might be called cosmic farce. Multiple characters race in and out, parcels are passed in the dark, and amidst such contrived chaos (reflecting the film’s unusual method of construction), our three anti-heroes at last define who they really are.

In Triangle, three of Hong Kong’s best known directors are unleashed onto cinema’s conventional three-act structure, with unexpectedly vibrant results.

Their filmmaking tastes and styles certainly contrast, but also prove complementary, delivering an overall coherence that’s never sacrificed to variety. Everything is wrapped up satisfactorily with an ending that’s more circle than triangle.