The Global Eccentricity of Tsui Hark and Wicked City

One of the beautiful things about a global cinematic culture is having the opportunity to see different parts of the world through the films made in those places. Filmmakers everywhere draw on their histories, their politics, and their day-to-day lives when crafting their stories, even in the most fantastical of contexts. Some of these movies make it to Austin, Texas, in the form of contemporary award-season imports, like Anatomy of a Fall and Drive My Car, and specialty repertory programming series, like Alamo’s Weird Wednesday and Austin Film Society’s Lates. When watching films from around the world, I always find myself thinking about how these films cross cultural and cinematic barriers: how the filmmaker uses action and visual storytelling as a universal language, how the filmmaker connects their personal story to broader themes, and how the filmmaker embraces the absurdity of the world around us. In Tsui Hark’s Wicked City (1992), we have one of global cinema’s finest and oddest examples. 

In Wicked City, a race of interplanetary, shapeshifting, epicurean creatures known as “Rapters” invade Earth to funnel a drug called “happiness” and to take over the planet’s electrical grid, which the Rapters feed from. The only force standing in their way is the Anti-Rapter Special Police, a law enforcement group with supernatural powers of their own. With focus on two specific officers: Taki, an expert marksman who's emotionally stunted after a love affair with a Rapter named Windy; and Ken Kai, the offspring of a Rapter-human couple whose sheltered upbringing led to hiding his true identity and a deep self-hatred, the ARSP seek to apprehend head Rapter, Daishu, and his son Shudo, and remove all of the Rapters from society. This story had previously received an anime feature adaptation in Japan and, with its wild aesthetic, surreal character designs, and heavy action sequences, animation makes a lot of sense for the cinematic version of Wicked City. But Tsui Hark takes a fearless stab at live action and, I believe, succeeds.

Tsui Hark, the producer, co-writer, and occasional director of Wicked City, honors this wild story in all of its glory. At a time when computer graphics were on the horizon of overwhelming the industry, Tsui Hark creates his world on-set with wild costumes, practical effects, and in-camera trickery. The Rapters appear in many different forms, and the ones Hark chooses to emphasize are the most engaging and crazy: a human-pinball machine that orgasms when Shudo hits a high score, a human-elevator hybrid that loves having people inside of it, and a motorcycle that loves to have sex. Did I mention the epicurean nature of the Rapters earlier? Hark directs the fight scenes between the ARSP and the Rapters as a marriage between gunplay and wire-fu, with plenty of explosions on the side. Any chance for the film to deliver in big, bold imagery, Hark goes for it. Daishu’s sacrifice and conversion to the ARSP team is symbolized by hanging him in a cross-like position for the middle chunk of the movie. Taki and Ken Kai’s race-against-time battle to stop the Rapters features a Rapter, shapeshifted into a giant clock, chasing them down. For every sad, emotional scene, Hark brings out the wind machine, the rain machine, and the highest-contrast lighting arrangement he can find. When it comes to visual storytelling, Tsui Hark doesn’t operate in half-measures.

While adapting a story filled with extreme action, humorous characterizations, and over-the-top emotions, Tsui Hark makes significant changes to the story to bring it to a more personal note. Originally taking place in Tokyo, Hark moves Wicked City to his hometown of Hong Kong and changes the time period to a very specific contemporary setting. Not only does it welcome a familiar setting to those in Hong Kong and those expecting a modern-day Hong Kong action film, but it allows Tsui Hark to comment on the wide variety of sociopolitical issues he finds important. Hong Kong’s return to ownership by mainland China, and the growing stress that transition entails, affects the ARSP and their dwindling resources as the Rapters mount their next invasion. Hark uses The Rapter’s pleasure-focused obsessions and the ARSP cops lack of inner life to comment on the pros and cons of a traditionally-conservative China and how growing influences from outside cultures, like the Hong Kong that has been under British rule for over one hundred years, will have on the society and the politics of the country. This hotbed of contemporary concerns becomes interwoven into the story of Wicked City, and Hark never lets up on the importance of this. The sci-fi tale of interplanetary beings coming in to steal resources has obvious metaphorical ground in commentaries on immigration or corporate greed, but Hark focuses on his personal politics and his views on a changing Hong Kong, something you can feel even as an American audience member watching the film 30 years after its release.

Between the big-production action sequences and the serious sociopolitical storytelling, Tsui Hark understands the source material has a silly, absurdist edge to it. The film plays on the Rapters’ sex-obsessed nature for laughs and their shapeshifting forms lean towards the bizarre in terms of design. Taki, the lead ARSP cop, expresses his self-worth through his skilled marksmanship and when Windy’s presence reveals his emotionally-stunted nature, he is unable to pull the trigger of his gun. The portrayal of Daishu, a Rapter who’s supposed to be the “big bad” of this story, goes from him being a no-nonsense entity to being the most overtly pleasure-seeking and silly of all of the Rapters in the story after his transition to the side of the ARSP. The fight sequences in Wicked City are accompanied by pun-filled quips and the kind of banter that global audiences would expect from internationally popular action films. Even at its most serious and bizarre, Tsui Hark invites the audience to laugh and have fun.

Tsui Hark understands how to make films for a global audience. Hark got his start in filmmaking by coming to America, studying film at Southern Methodist University and UT Austin, and began working on films in New York City before returning to Hong Kong to make his first feature. That feature, The Butterfly Murders, was a mixture of a variety of styles, with traditional wuxia cinema blending with a crowd-friendly murder mystery plot and fantasy elements. From the get-go, Tsui Hark saw American films and Hong Kong films and found ways to blend their most entertaining and engaging elements while not losing their roots or what made the stories important to him. His films had such a wide appeal, American studios came calling for a run of films in the 1990s with Jean-Claude Van Damme because they saw that, not only did Tsui Hark make great films, but Tsui Hark made films that crossed cultural boundaries and made a lot of money. With over fifty directing credits, almost seventy producing credits, almost fifty writing credits, and who-knows-how-many uncredited contributions (Hark directed many scenes of Wicked City, but sole credit went to Peter Mak), Hark is an example of the ultimate working filmmaker in one of the biggest filmmaking industries on the planet. Wicked City showcases him at his finest.

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