One Last Dance

Directed by: Max Makowski

Starring: Francis Ng, Ti Lung, Harvey Keitel

Synopsis:

“T” is a hitman, cool, debonair and always in control. He is asked by a friend to help interrogate 3 youths about some suitcases full of money. What he doesn’t know, until its too late, is that one of the youths is the only son of his boss.

Review: I picked this up on dvd the other week out of pure curiosity – I’d never heard of it, and seeing both Francis Ng and Harvey Keitel in the cast I knew I couldn’t pass it up.

At first I was a little worried that this would be playing exclusively to the art-house crowd, as “T” begins the movie with a dreary voice-over about life as a song, or some such. In addition, the movie’s scenes are not shown in linear order – we constantly flash back and forth through time until the movie takes pity on us at the end and gives us a more straight-forward account of the movie’s events.

Director Makowski does hand out a couple of outstanding flourishes to his tale, such as when Ko (T’s friend) goes on a bender with his mates and the whole thing is told via Polaroid photos. Another virtuoso scene sees T stalking a target through a train station whilst avoiding the gaze of the CCTV cameras. The movie has a nice, old-fashioned feel to it, mainly thanks to Francis Ng's performance as the suave killer T, who seems to be a throwback to an earlier era, and his benevolent relationship with a seasoned police detective played by the great Ti Lung, an actor we see very little of these days.

The movie contains a lot of humour which some have found disjointed to the central plot, but I personally felt fit the mood of the piece. As for Harvey Keitel, his scene is pretty pivotal to the action of the plot. Overall I felt there was no real need for the disjointed timeline – in fact I think it would have benefited from a more straightforward style. As it is One Last Dance is an enigmatic thriller with a number of interesting characters.

Verdict:

An interesting movie, one that entertains from start to finish. I was never bored watching it and the central mystery was challenging to piece together before the big reveal at the end.

6 Out of 10 (MikeOutWest)