Mad Fate

Opening Film, 2023 Hong Kong International Film Festival

There’s blood in the water, the sharks are circling, and The Master is our only hope. Get ready for MAD FATE’s Gotham’esque vision of Hong Kong, where a jittery fortune teller tries to save the world, one karma-cleaning at a time. When he runs into a cat-killing, murder-craving delivery boy Siu Tung (Lok Man Yeung), The Master frantically concocts feng shui rituals and smothers the walls with talismans – anything to reroute sinister energies and save Siu Tung from the psychopathic destiny clawing for his soul. But when their paths keep crossing with a grisly serial killer terrorizing prostitutes and a hard-boiled cop in hot pursuit, murderous urges get retriggered, the stakes get bloodier, and four men’s trajectories get impossibly entwined. As they teeter on the edge of evil, redemption, and sanity, it’s anybody’s guess which fate will win.

Frequent Johnny To collaborators, director Soi Cheang gives us a Hong Kong swollen with violence in its dirtiest crevices, while cinematographer Cheng Siu-keung blankets Hong Kong in a velvet lens as undulating and bejeweled as it is grotesque. In the midst of carnal and cosmic hopelessness, Gordon Lam scampers and convulses, a knockout portrait of sheer will grasping at the slimmest, dubious possibility that one man can save another. Come take a midnight swim in Soi Cheang’s cheeky cocktail of chaotic action, the darkly perverse, and absurdly desperate spiritual hope.

– Christina Ree

Co-Presented by The Hong Konger Club.