Online Review: The Stool Pigeon (2010)



 

        “The Stool Pigeon” is a Hong Kong action film directed by Dante Lam in 2010. The film is about a police detective, Don Lee (Nick Cheung) who deploys informants to gain insider information about gangsters. Lee recruits a street racer named Ghost (Nicholas Tse) as his latest stool pigeon who is assigned to infiltrate into a gang led by the notorious armed robber Barbarian (Lu Yi).
As the director, Dante Lam said that "Hong Kong didn’t have shoot-out film on this theme yet. It's a good subject for exploring human nature and I have done much research with involved people in real life" (China.org. cn, 2010). In this review, I would like to focus on the character build up and the deeper meaning of this film.

 

        In typical Hong Kong police and crime films, a good image of the police is often created and conveyed to the audience. However, it is hard to find this image in this film. Don Lee had extramarital relations and as a result, his wife had amnesia and almost lost her life. Work-wise, Lee had been under introspection and guilt, because the past stool pigeon who worked for him had become lunatic after severely hit by the gangsters who found that he betrayed them. On the other hand, Ghost is a stool pigeon and member of gang who had been to jail many times. By the standard of typical police and crime films, we would assume that Ghost is a villain in the film. However, Ghost wants to help to pay off his father's one-million dollar debt so that he could rescue his sister from prostitution. It shows the good and honest image of this character. By the main character, we can find some contradiction between their behavior and mindset. It induces the audience to think about the meaning of hero and villain beyond the surface. In our society, there are stereotypes that villain would not do any good things or hero must help and protect people. It seems that everything is black and white. However, the worldview of this film shows us that the society isn’t simply black and white. For example, we can easily to find crimes which are committed by police or government official nowadays.

        At the end of this film, because of the lack of evidences, Don Lee needs to decide whether to request Ghost to become a deponent to attest the crimes of the robber Barbarian. We can see that Don Lee agonizes over this decision he has to make. This echoes with a scene in the beginning of the film, in which Don Lee was teaching his subordinates how to communicate with stool pigeons. He said that “they are not friends of us, so it’s just a business and we don’t need to protect them”. In the past, Don Lee believed in this motto and it caused his past stool pigeon to become lunatic and lost his family. After this incident, Lee’s mindset has slowly changed from merely utilizing his informants to protecting Ghost. Finally, Don Lee decided to save Ghost, based on his human nature and not bound by police responsibilities, but it was too late. These scenes clearly show the human nature of the characters.

 

       In this film, the director Dante Lam also shows his personal style of filming. There are many exciting shootout scenes in this film, and Lam handled them well. He has also chosen to shoot in places with local feel, such as in the public housing. All these show that Dante Lam keeps his own personal style to represent a new Hong Kong shoot-out film. In this film, the characters have different desires such as money or love, just like everyone in our society. We want to satisfy our desire so we always use different method to achieve. However, sometimes we may ignore our human nature. Through this movie, Dante Lam shows the grey areas between black and white, and reminds us that we should keep our human nature.


Reference:

Lin, Chaoxian, Nicholas Tse, Nick Cheung, and Lunmei Gui. Xian Ren: The Stool Pigeon. Xianggang: Yu gao yu le you xian gong si, 2010.

“The Stool Pigeon to hit cinemas August 26” China.org. cn. July 21, 2010 <http://www.china.org.cn/arts/2010-07/21/content_20543583.htm>

CHAN YEE KA Amber (10420278)