Tyler is a restless, streetwise 21-year-old Hong Kong native who's had trouble gaining the trust of others all his life. He secretly fantasizes about living the good life in South America. After a while, he is forced to deal with the reality of impending fatherhood. Hankering for quick cash, however, he joins a bodyguard company. Later, he makes friends with a once disillusioned mercenary determined to begin life in a new way. However, their companionship is brief: they both are uncontrollably forced toward opposite sides of a deadly showdown...
AMAZON.COM REVIEWS FOR SEUNLAU NGAKLAU (2000): Every time you think you've seen everything action movies have to offer, along comes one that makes your jaw drop. Tsui Hark's Time and Tide is one of those movies. The plot careens all over the place like a drunken driver: it starts out when a bartender in Hong Kong named Tyler (Nicholas Tse) sleeps with a lesbian undercover cop and gets her pregnant. To make money to give her to help support the baby, he takes a job with a bodyguard firm run by a loan shark--all of the other bodyguards are men who owe the loan shark money and are trying to work off their debt. The firm gets an assignment protecting a wealthy executive, who has a daughter who's married to a butcher named Juan (Wu Bai) who's actually a former mercenary--OK, this is where things really go off the rails, but never fear: you will not be bothered by the story. You will find yourself caring about these characters, even though you're not entirely sure who they are. You will not be bored for a single moment of this movie, and when you get to the sequence where the mercenary and the head of the heist gang (who are former partners--maybe) are having a shootout while rapelling down the walls of a gigantic Hong Kong tenement, time will suspend and you will gaze in rapt astonishment, unable to understand how anyone could have conceived of these astonishing action sequences, let alone brought them to delirious, stunningly graceful life. Time and Tide is amazing, and Tsui Hark (Peking Opera Blues, Once upon a Time in China, Green Snake) is one of the geniuses of contemporary cinema. --Bret Fetzer
AWARDS FOR SEUNLAU NGAKLAU (2000):
- Hong Kong Film Awards
2001
Nominated
Hong Kong Film Award
Best Action Choreography
Xin Xin Xiong
Best Film Editing
Marco Mak
Best New Performer
Candy Lo
Best Original Film Score
Tommy Wai
Shek-Leung Kung
Best Sound Design
On Hui
Ka-Luk Yu
Martin Richard Chappell
Best Supporting Actress
Candy Lo
- Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA
2002
Nominated
Golden Reel Award
Best Sound Editing - Foreign Film
Martin Richard Chappell (sound editor)
May Mok (dialogue editor)
Ming Ying Chen (dialogue editor)
- Venice Film Festival
2000
Won
Future Film Festival Digital Award
Hark Tsui