Accident (2009)

Really Surprised!

Awesome Movie

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This is the sort of movie I love if done right. I will say right off the bat this one is not done well. The premise is good = a gang of contract killers arrange murders to look like accidents. The leader of the gang gets trapped by his own paranoia forgetting that accidents can really do happen. The murders reminded me of those serial action contraptions we had as kids that have one thing lead to another in a complicated sequence--a marble rolls down an incline to land on a lever that activates a spring that pours some water etc etc.....What ever happened to those toys? I guess computer games perempted them.The idea is good why couldn't they have polished it up and made the thing believable? The murders are accomplished by unbelievably complicated serial actions that are just that UNBELIEVABLE---the first target gets out of his car because a canvas sign is covering part of the windshield (this is near the end of one of these unbelievable trip wire sequences)...why doesn't he just drive on? Better yet have the sign cover the whole windshield and make it believable!!! In another murder an old man in a wheel chair rolls down a street out of control to the exact spot where a wire is dangling from a high tension overhead power line---put there by a kite in a rain storm. The visuals kind of sum up the caliber of the film....gory cheesy Kung Fu death sequences with watery blood belching out of mouths..Over all plot where paranoia tricks the main character is also a good idea...but come on write a more convincing story--an eclipse of the sun ruining one of these things dumb! yawn!Art Film Quality? You have to be kidding---well maybe not considering what wins at those things.How is wish this movie had been better!DO NOT RECOMMEND

I'm not sure what to make of this movie. It's not a long film, and so repeat viewings may make people appreciate its intricacies more. The film revolves around a small tight-knit group of assassins who work by killing their victims in ways that would appear to have been purely an accident, the "accident" being decidedly gruesome once executed.Led diligently by a straight-forward highly intelligent man they call "Brains", they work to ensure no trace can lead the deaths to themselves. When the tables are turned and a member is killed, the focus closes on "Brain" who struggles to find out what has happened and gone wrong, and who is out to get them.It's a moody film and uses the claustrophobic HK atmosphere well. One problem is that it's hard to decipher all that is happening from one viewing. It can get ponderous and confusing. The acting is generally very good and the action of the deaths very well done, but it doesn't compensate for the lack of clarity. Then again maybe it wasn't meant to be a tidy film and that is the point.Overall, I thought it was okay and interesting enough. Maybe with some more work and time on the script then it could have become far better. Not bad, but just not great.

You know how it is when you cry wolf too much, or are one of those pranksters who ultimately falls for a trick just because of you didn't believe it can happen to you. Accident plays along similar lines, and director Soi Cheang's latest film is an excellent atmospheric piece that adds to Milkyway's repertoire of tautly crafted contemporary crime thrillers.Accident introduces a bunch of hit men who bump their marks off very differently. They are not hardened criminals who are on the radar of the cops, but operate in such stealthy fashion, from obtaining their contracts, right down to execution (pardon the pun) and retrieval of payment dues. The movie boasts two of such finely designed set action pieces sans guns ablazing, but full of meticulously planned cunning (in what is staple in heist films) carried out to a T, where death gets delivered to victims and made to look like freak acts of god, which of course takes a wee bit of stretching of the imagination since some bits do rely on coincidences to ensure a perfect degree of success.The trouble amongst this group lies with the leader Brain (Louis Koo), whose crew consisting of Uncle (a welcome to see Feng Tsui-Fan back to the big screen), Fatty (a role that Milkyway evergreen regular Lam Suet owns), and a beautiful but unnamed woman (Michelle Ye), feel a little stifled given Brain's suspicious and paranoia nature. In what Brain preaches as Trust amongst his crew, it is actually trust that he personally doesn't embody, with frequent taps on his gang to ensure that they toe the line. The reason why Brain would choose a life as such was suggested in the prologue, which adds some emotional weight to the deliberate deadpan of the character, one conscientiously living off the grid, with no bank account, and no Octopus card too for public transport, preferring to use cash and not leave a paper trail.It's the second half of the film that intrigued a lot more, as we're drawn into Brain's suspicious world from the time the second action sequence didn't go as planned, and went horribly awry. Refusing to believe in chance encounters since there are others in the business, and that their earlier victim had been a triad boss, we're thrusts into a web of possibilities to the chain of events that follow, which involves an insurance worker played by Richie Jen in what would be nothing more than a glorified cameo. You'll start to question whether Brain's set up from the inside (ala Brian De Palma's Mission Impossible), or is outwitted by Jen's character, or just drowning into his own delusions where his paranoia finally caught up with him.And this became translated into the Louis Koo show. Of late he has been starring in a number of noteworthy roles, but his character here really took the cake. A friend of mine had commented that Lau Ching Wan would find the Brain character right up his alley, but I thought Koo did well enough in this role that involved minimal dialogue, of a quiet man on a warpath utilizing his trade to find some meaning in debunking that thing called Chance. I suppose you can also call it an occupational hazard of sorts.The mood of the film will really get to you, with rain soaked sequences, moments of aloofness and loneliness (kinda like an art film at times too) and unflinching scenes of violence, with credit also going to the soundtrack by Xavier Jamaux, who has also been involved with and contributed to Milkyway productions such as Sparrow and Mad Detective. If you're a fan of the soundtrack from those movies, then you're in for a treat when you watch Accident. Running less than 90 minutes, the finale, or the "Eureka" or moment of realization, is a scene that I'll remember for a long time to come. While it might have been similar to the Deux Ex Machina styled as employed in another Milkyway production in Eye in the Sky, I thought that it played into the themes of Chance, Fate and Karma all rolled into one perfectly shot and designed sequence, that had me at the edge of my seat and wondering how it would all finally play out. And when the answer is so starkly simple, you're left to ponder that you too have already become what Brain symbolized – you have thought too much, and share in the same level of reluctance to believe in anything other than the situation having to be something overly engineered.I would recommend that you give Accident a go in the cinemas, but of course if you're willing to put up with it being dubbed in Mandarin, and censored sex scenes being treated in the same manner as Overheard.

Accident might just be the most refined and intelligent piece of Hong Kong cinema since 2002's Infernal Affairs. The film probably won't prove as popular with mainstream audiences due to its almost meditative, slow-burn pacing - but for anyone with an interest in inventive genre cinema, Soi Cheang's newest outing is a must-see.Taking its cues from Jean-Pierre Melville, Accident revolves around a group of assassins who stage their murders like accidents. The group is led by Brain (Louis Koo in a career-defining performance), who grows increasingly paranoid when one of the group's accidents goes awry and kills another member.Thankfully, while the actual "accidents" are impressive and cleverly put together, Soi Cheang doesn't make the mistake of letting gimmicky set pieces dominate his film. Instead, Accident becomes a fascinating character study of a man who gradually destroys himself through paranoia and guilt. As such, the film largely depends on Louis Koo's performance - and what a performance it is; with this film, Koo finally deserves to be elevated from the hotpot of mediocre HK-popstars-cum-actors people used to include him in.Add to this an elegiac score by Xavier Jamaux, elegant cinematography and you end up with the most compelling film to come out of Asia in the past 2 years.If there is any problem to be found in this, it's that Accident is purely a Milkyway Image film, not a Soi Cheang film. Anyone hoping to find the director's trademark relentlessness here will be disappointed - although it could be argued some of the nihilism found in works like Dog Bite Dog was carried over into Accident's finale.