THE LAST TYCOON (review)

Review by Tony Pacitti

Wong Jing’s gangster epic is an epic only in the most basic sense of the word.

It spans decades. Its characters eventually find themselves intertwined with a larger political conflict.

It has that whole star-crossed, doomed lover thing going on.

We’ve seen this in other epics; epics that also played out over the course of a life time, squared its cast off against Big Important Things, and showed love blooming innocently in youth and wilting with age and corruption.

The Last Tycoon garishly announces “I’ve got all that stuff!” without providing much besides dizzying window dressing and bad music video flair.

Cameras swoop and pan constantly; edits come fast and hyper-kinetic. The grace and subtly of the bigger, better films it’s aping are nowhere to be seen.

It borrows themes and scenes liberally from Casablanca, The Godfather, Bonnie and Clyde, and Inglourious Basterds—even going as far as to lift the iconic endings of three of those films entirely—presenting it as a kind of Michael Bay/Baz Luhrmann Frankenmovie.

A sense of scope, a few double-crosses, and gaudy technique do not an epic make.

Admittedly my experience with Hong Kong cinema is limited to the few scenes of The Killer and Hard Boiled that I saw in college. My familiarity with Chow Yun-fat, like many uninitiated Westerners, doesn’t go any further than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He’s charming here, but outside of one emotional breakdown late in the game he does little else besides appear kind of charming.

I tried hard to talk myself into the idea that maybe there’s something here I’m missing, a key ingredient to Hong Kong cinema that keeps me from fully appreciating what’s on screen.

But it’s not that.

I’ve felt that before. I know when a movie is better than I realize because the thing not clicking is on my end.  I’m not taking the heat for this.

The Last Tycoon is a clichéd story of two young people who fall in love before life gets in the way and reconnect after a whole lot of life has made it impossible for them to be together. Then there’s a knife fight that should have been awesome. And then there’re explosions. And then it uses the ending from Casablanca.

And then there’s still like thirty minutes left.