To be almost have it but not. To almost know the complete picture but still missing some pieces. To fear but you must go on. Don't we know this is the way most of us experience life?You can get frustrated by some of the more nuance Johonnie To films. They may not be about the ends but the means. They may not be about plot lines but plot circles. And PTU is about as round as you get. But notice the cool eating places, the explicit and yet natural lighting, the play of light and shadows. It is a poem more than a story, almost.Maybe it is not important who lost what or who gain what in the this one single night within the movie, but drink in the atmosphere, walk with the people of the night, see their world, worries their worries, and live another life!

We meet the PTU on one of their worse nights. Chasing a suspect, a police sergeant loses his gun, and streets away, the son of a crime lord is stabbed to death in a small restaurant. We follow the PTU in their attempts to both find the policeman's weapon and prevent the fallout from the murder escalating. While it sounds an intriguing premise, PTU is not the pacey action-thriller you might expect, but is instead a slow, dark, and tense journey through the HK underworld.Some scenes are brilliant, the use of harsh light and almost omnipresent shadow works well, effectively capturing the mood of the underworld. There's some real artistry here, and it's for that reason that the pacing frequently seems to be a little slow; the scenes look so good that the camera lingers on them for perhaps too long, causing pacing issues in some sections. However, it does work well in terms of suspense as the film builds towards its inevitably violent conclusion.On a negative note, the music is terrible, and significantly dates a film that's only four years old. You have to wonder if they ran out of action movie ambiance sounds and just hit the classic cheese guitar button instead, but I guess that's just an Eastern film meets Western audience convention clash. It does however, in my opinion, completely undermine the final scene, which comes across as faintly ridiculous instead of as a dramatic release.While it suffers from pacing and score issues, PTU's style and sense of tragic irony are enough to make it enjoyable if not quite essential viewing.

PTU is a movie that looks very good, but completely lacks content. The entire movie takes place at night in a deserted Hong Kong. I say "deserted" because the streets are almost completely void of people. A car may occasionally pass by and a person or two might be seen in the background, but that's about it. The city is illuminated only by the harsh glow of street lights, with everything else shrouded in darkness. These qualities give the movie a slightly surreal feel, as if it took place in some kind of parallel universe of its own. I guess you could say that the movie is minimalistic, in many ways. There's not much music, dialogue is sparse and the camera doesn't do any neat tricks.The story: I have no idea. A police detective loses his sidearm, and the cops go looking for it. That's about all I can say, because I was unable to figure out what was going on. Lots of phone calls are made, meetings are arranged, and there's some kind of struggle between two gangs, and the police may or may not be somehow involved. There are some subplots (or something) that don't seem to be connected to anything. Maybe it's just my fault, but I didn't get it. The group of police officers that the movie follows seem to be corrupt. The detective who loses his weapon seems to be corrupt too. There's also another detective who is investigating something and is suspicious of the first detective for some reason, and she could be corrupt too, but who knows. She's the only interesting character in the movie.PTU has some bad problems with pacing. At 40 minutes into the movie, it felt like the story was still being set up and the characters introduced. There are many slow scenes where nothing really happens, such as the one where the cops climb a staircase for 5 minutes. Maybe the director tried to do things like Takeshi Kitano, but failed. The ending wraps things up but holds no meaning since I had no idea what was going on.At least it looks good. The only other Johnny To movie that I've seen is Fulltime Killer, and it didn't impress me either.

This Hong Kong policier is a classic of its kind, a technically updated version of what America has not produced in fifty years. Lloyd Nolan or Lee Marvin could walk on at any time. Tough cops and tough criminals beat each other up without whining. It is ultra cool and thoroughly enjoyable without asking any earth-shattering questions. The only way to not like it is to not like the genre.