Theory of Ambitions (2022)

• Year: 2022
• Released: 05 Feb 2023
• Country: China, Hong Kong
• Adwords: 4 wins & 7 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902394/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/theory_of_ambitions
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Cantonese, Mandarin, English, Shanghainese, Teochew, Japanese
• MPA Rating: N/A
• Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
• Runtime: 144 min
• Writer: Wai-Tung Lam, Effy Sun, Oliver Yip
• Director: Philip Yung
• Cast: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Aaron Kwok, Jessie Li
• Keywords:

6.0/10

Theory of Ambitions Storyline

Follows Lui Lok, a police officer who decides to make a name for himself within the police force by controlling organized crime.

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Theory of Ambitions Movie Reviews

A big-budgeted arthouse crime film that pays tribute to Hong Kong history. Too overpacked and convoluted but the HK sentiment is heartfelt.

Where the Wind Blows is a big-budgeted arthouse crime epic that is a love letter to Hong Kong and its history. Aaron Kwok and Tony Leung deliver charismatic performances as Lui Lok and Lam Kong, two of the four corrupt police commissioners in Hong Kong, spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s. It’s an ambitious film with a big gushing heart and has much to say about Hong Kong but struggles with conveying it all succinctly.

Through a romantic nostalgic lens, director Phillip Yung directs the film like a set of glossy nostalgic postcards, featuring snapshots of Hong Kong in each decade, from the Japanese occupation to poverty to its stability and eventual flourish. The production design, costumes, and music exquisitely pop off the screen.

Structured like a kaleidoscopic collage, the story follows the Lui Lok and Lam Kong characters through the historical timeline, covering history, politics, and the romantic relationships with their wives. It is epic through its 50-year span and intimate through its use of voice-overs and flashbacks.

It reminded me of Martin Scorsese’s Casino at times, where we intimately live inside the characters’ heads, privy to their innermost thoughts.

Aaron Kwok does a great job reimagining Lui Lok as a straight-faced, tap-dancing romantic hero with an insatiable drive. Kwok naturally projects an eagerness, which he precisely tones down to fit Phillip Yung’s idealistic vision. The real Lui Lok was likely closer to Francis Ng’s rough-hewn portrayal from Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong.

Tony Leung is charming and understated as the debonair piano-playing Lam Kong. His character is often off-the-side and soft-spoken, but it was impressive how much Leung was still conveying from doing so little. Phillip Yung devotes a lot of screen time to developing Lui Lok and Lam Kong; the contrast is what hooked me throughout the whole movie.

While I enjoyed Du Juan’s performance as Choi Chan, Lui Lok’s wife, the subplot about her helping him behind the scenes undermines what the real-life Lui Lok achieved by systemizing bribery in the 60s.

There’s a lot of praise behind comedian Michael Hui’s role as an ICAC agent. The performance is not bad but I was more moved by the speech itself. My take is Hong Kong audiences just miss seeing Hui onscreen.

All that said, Where the Wind Blows is convoluted and overloaded. At 2 hours and 44 minutes, even with fast-paced editing, there’s too much information to take in. There’s a crucial plot point where the four police commissioners have a disagreement that is murky and unclear. Plot threads are connected in ways that are unexpected and it gets challenging keeping up with them all.

Audiences going in with the expectations of a linear traditional crime epic will leave disappointed by a lack of guns blazing in the finale. It’s not the Godfather, nor is it Infernal Affairs.

This is Phillip Yung paying a loving tribute to Hong Kong and its history, as if to say, “Look how far we’ve come.” That Hong Kong sentiment is heartfelt. I enjoyed being in Phillip Yung’s Hong Kong as a romanticized memory. Yung is not showing how events happened, but rather how we’d ideally remember it as a collective dream.

Where the Wind Blows requires a second viewing. There’s still so much to unpack and it was a dense history lesson. The film will have a better chance of finding its audience through streaming where it has the benefit of being paused, rewound, and rewatched. I suspect I’ll like it, even more, the second time.

Again, the surfactant washed everything

Most of the time, Hk movies that are financed elsewhere has a two dimensional problem. They look good, damn good. And with big stars. International stars at that.

But that’s it. In this case, a possibly 12 hr miNi series cut to 2.5 hrs. So editing chops the story to bits and pieces. Feels like shot by 2-3 2nd unit directors and then multi edited. The plot is too sprawling, ambitious, yet also too condensed for its own good.

The dancing attributes are just tailor made for Aaron.

Dancing doesn’t make sense to this kind of story. Mixed genre here doesn’t jive. The rhythm to the speeches, dialogue, monologue scenes for Tony seemed very off, rushed, one take-ish, had no drama, no underlying thoughts.

The camera wants to be romantic and stays between 85mm to 180mm. Very distracting, some obviously can be seen as homage/copying old Tony Leung’s movies.

All body, not content. All show and no depth. Walked off around 45min mark.

Perfect example of wasting the best resources of what most Asian directors could ever dream of

Extraordinary casting with incredibly accurate production design but…

This is by far the most humiliating, disrespectful, disgusting Hong Kong film that I have ever seen. Politically the director has chosen to twist the history of what had actually happened during and after the world war. Accusing Kuomingtan to cause the riots during 50s-60s instead of the communist party who actually caused it. This director and production is so afraid of the CCP now that they decided to change the history with the silly movie that they have shot.

Despite all the historical non sense. This movie is so unbearable and hard to watch. It’s a disgrace of the Hong Kong film industry. Waste of talents, waste of resources, waste of audience’s patience’s and time. Plain rubbish.