Time

Title: Time
Director: Ricky Ko
Released: 2021
Starring: Patrick Tse, Fung Bo-bo, Lam Suet, Sam Lee, Suet-Ying Chung, J.J Jia

Plot: A retired trio of assassins find a new use for their skills when they form the Elderly Angels Squad to help carry out the euthanasia wishes of their clients. However things get complicated for the group when a young girl hires their services. 

Review: A film tries to cover quite a few topics from the treatment of the elderly, euthanasia, teenage pregnancy and abortion while equally never sure what tone it want to aim for with Director Ricky Ko switching between comedy and drama. 

Heading up the group of OAP assassins is Chau (Tse) once renown for his quick blade skills and who along with his fellow assassins Fung (Bo-bo) and their driver Chung (Lee) are introduced in their prime showing off their almost superhuman skills before the film flashes forward to the present with Fung now running a cabaret bar while living with her son his wife and their young son. Chung is involved in an unrequited relationship with a prostitute he regularly visits. Chau meanwhile has resigned to living a quiet life in the country while still trying to maintain his knife skills but generally struggling to find a purpose in life now he’s retired from the assassin game.

Transferring their skills into helping euthanize the elderly members of the local community wanting to hire their services as they find themselves struggling with old age, illness or even loneliness and  it initially looks like the trio have found a new lease for their skills. However when Tsz-ying (Suet-Ying) forces her way into the life of Chau in a move highly reminiscent of Mathilda in Leon  more so when Chau starts teaching her his knife skills uncovering deeper issues to be dealt with as he takes on the role of surrogate grandfather to her. 

While intitally the film seems to have found it’s setup in the first half it’s also were we encounter one of the biggest issues working against the film in that it’s never quite sure what it wants to be flitting between topics with the issues of the trio popping in and out as storylines are dropped off and picked up as quickly as it genre hops playing up the comedy elements in one scene while taking a more dramatic turn the next. Somehow though the film keeps it together though perhaps due to the likeable nature of the cast who all play well with each other with Patrick Tse and Petrina Fung especially still sharing such great chemistry together. Lam Suet meanwhile could be seen out of place especially in this trio seeing how much younger he is than his co-stars and yet his role as the portly driver in a arguably one sided relationship with the prostitute he regularly visits adds it’s own to the overall story.

Despite the age of his leading players Ko manages to still work in some fun action beats while obviously working around the limitations of his aging cast from the opening over the top introductory brawl highlighted with freeze frame and comic book highlights to a chaotic showdown in a backstreet abortion clinic with some clever editing helping to counter the close up camera work which is to be expected but Tse still shows some impressive skills which when not slashing throats with lightning speed (one of the few things seemingly not affected by his age) proves himself equally handy at using his knife skills to give a haircut to a trio of would be attackers. 

The constant genre jump and arguably unfocused plot does means this won’t be for everyone , especially when the promising euthanasia plot of the first half of the film is cast aside in the second half and never mentioned again. Still with some great engaging performances and generally charming nature of the film it makes it worth sticking with.