Asian Film Festival of Dallas on-site report and movie review: Accident (Yi ngoi)

by John P. Meyer

Shades of Final Destination and elements of The Conversation make this a movie to look for -- if it ever shows up on area theater screens again.

As Steve Norwood, senior programmer for the Asian Film Festival of Dallas (AFFD), put it: These are the hard-core film fans.

Norwood was referring to (and addressing!) the crowd of twenty some-odd attendees sitting in the Magnolia Theater auditorium at 2 p.m. on Monday, there to see a mystery/thriller directed by Cheang Pou-Soi called Accident.

The cool thing about film festivals in general is that you get the chance to see movies that will likely never make it into your local mall multiplex cinema. Even cooler, if you have the opportunity to attend daytime screenings during an event such as the AFFD, the likelihood is that you won't have to worry about long lines -- or, in this case, any lines at all. (AFFD film events continue through Thursday, when director Quentin Lee will host a Q&A following the closing night showcase screening of his film, The People I've Slept With.)

Norwood gave a brief introduction to Accident, stating that he found it just as thrilling and slickly produced as mainstream Hollywood fare -- particularly after his second viewing of the film.

Prior to my first (and only) viewing, the film was preceded by a few disturbingly blurry coming attraction teasers that made me wonder whether the feature presentation was going to look equally crappy. Such worries proved baseless, because once Accident opened (with the depiction of a fittingly accidental event, featuring perhaps the gaudiest raspberry-colored blood ever seen on a film set), the image on screen was crisp and clear.

The story centers on an enterprising squad of contract assassins who are expert at making their hits appear to be accidental. And what spectacular "accidents" they are!

As meticulously engineered by The Brain (Louis Koo, brooding and inward and stone cold -- at least on the outside), their exterminations are Rube Goldberg-ian in their intricacy, and rather too reliant on improbable convergences of events to be entirely believable. In one scenario, the kill is dependent upon a rainstorm occurring at just the right time of day -- leading to a tedious procession of days in which the team is forced to abort their mission and come back again the next day. And the next.

When things do eventually go as planned, however, it plays like a scene from one of the Final Destination movies: It's as if the very hand of Death were descending upon the field of action, manipulating time and space to make things happen. Such thrilling scenes (of which there are only three or four -- depending upon whether one of them is, indeed, accidental) make up the most memorable part of Accident -- though this isn't to say that's all it's got going for it.

The performances are another strong point, starting with that of Louis Koo, whose character -- already living (uncomfortably) with a tragic backstory -- is forced to come to terms with a growing suspicion that the unfortunate events impacting his crew and their mission might have been engineered by a competing team of plotters.

The Brain's suspicions evolve into obsessions, and soon he's striking out at those he suspects of the diabolically subtle sabotage, getting them before they have a chance to get him. In particular, he suspects an insurance executive (Richie Ren as Chan Fong-chow); Brain goes so far as to rent out an apartment right below the man's residence. He sketches the layout of his neighbor's rooms and the placement of their furnishings on his own ceiling, and plants bugs upstairs so he can listen in to whatever the man is doing. Coppola's The Conversation is referenced both by the themes of paranoia at play, and by the actual electronic invasions of privacy.

To put his suspicions to rest once and for all, Brain sets out to pull off his grandest "accident" yet, involving the blinding glare of evening sunlight on the windshield of an automobile near a busy intersection. Unfortunately, he forgets to check the calendar of astronomical events...

Glamorous Michelle Ye shines as Brain's most talented and trusted (well, at least for a while) operative, with Fung Shui-Fan (as Uncle) and Lam Suet (as Fatty) rounding out the killer crew. Monica Mok does memorable cameo duty as the lovely, ill-fated paramour of the under-suspicion upstairs neighbor.

There's no telling whether Accident will play in area theaters again any time soon, but if it does, I encourage you to see it. You will not be disappointed by this well-crafted, diabolically crafty film.