Review: Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In

One of the telltale signs that you’ve become an “old” person is when you start to pine for the “good old days.” While this can (and often does) take the form of nostalgia for past activities and entertainment, it can also morph into a romanticization of what you believed was better since you were younger. We’re seeing this right now in America with the ongoing presidential race where Republicans are trying to make the country “great” again and it’s a scary thing. This blanket belief that everything old is better leads to not only stagnation but regression.

What does that have to do with Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In? While not a political film by any means, it takes the idea of Kowloon Walled City and glamorizes it as some bastion of hope, family, and resilience. While there was absolutely an appeal to the practically dystopian settlement, it was not an institution that should have stuck around. So much crime, violence, and illicit activities occurred there that it needed to be expunged to help Hong Kong move into the 21st century.

If you go by what director Soi Cheang is selling, though, then we lost something monumental when Kowloon was razed.

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
Director: Soi Cheang
Release Date: May 1, 2024 (China, Hong Kong), May 24, 2024 (UK), July 28, 2024 (NYAFF), August 9, 2024 (US)
Rating: R

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In starts with a quick flashback to give us some background (and tease the already announced second film, Dragon Throne, which is a prequel). During the 60s in Kowloon’s Walled City, a gang war broke out among previously sworn brothers Cyclone (Louis Koo) and Jim (Aaron Kwok). After many days of struggle, Cyclone emerged victorious and took his crown as the king of Kowloon, establishing the city as his stomping grounds and swearing to protect it from outside influence.

Flashforward to the late 80s, a kid by the name of Chan Lok-kwan (Raymond Lam) is doing everything he can to earn enough money to buy a fake Hong Kong ID card. After winning an underground fight, he is taken to meet Mr. Big (Sammo Hung), a crime lord who has his fingers in multiple different pies. Mr. Big rips off Lok and in return, Lok grabs a bag of drugs and flees. After a thrilling bus battle, Lok winds up in Kowloon and meets up with Cyclone, who promptly beats him within an inch of his life.

Over the course of the next few days, Lok ingratiates himself to Cyclone and Cyclone’s gang, which includes members Shin (Terrance Lau), Twelfth Master (Tony Wu), and AV (German Cheung). Through their struggles to survive within the Walled City, they become friends and stick by Cyclone as he attempts to maintain some kind of order within his walls. Eventually, things go sideways, but I won’t spoil how or why.

The initial premise and its (admittedly) exciting opening action scene give you a sense that Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is going to be a classic straight out of the golden era of Hong Kong action films. With fight choreography from Kenji Tanigaki, known for his incredible work on the live-action Rurouni Kenshin films, it feels just as visceral and hard-hitting as anything John Woo was coming up with in the late 80s. There’s great use of the environments, tons of dust and debris, and even a sprinkle of wuxia flavor to make these characters feel larger than life.

Even the cinematography in the opening sequence is fantastic. At one point, Lok runs onto one of the streets in Shek Tong Tsui and hops onto a double-decker bus that practically looks like it came out of Stanley Kwan’s Rouge. The neon lights bathe the scene in a fluorescent glow and the intensity of the scene disguises the sometimes-shoddy-looking digital stitching done for backgrounds. It’s a fantastic first impression for the film.

Where things start to fall apart is when Twilight of the Warriors slows down to explain its plot, which is practically non-existent. In some way, this movie is a coming-of-age story for its lead, Lok. He was abandoned at a young age by his mother and never even knew his father since the man died before he was born. While his struggles to get where he currently is aren’t elaborated on -and are probably being saved for the prequel-, he’s never had a family to call his own. Cyclone taking pity on him is Lok’s first chance at establishing some roots.

At the same time, Cyclone is working to figure out some way to prevent Kowloon from being torn down, which involves meetings with his sworn brothers Chau (Richie Jen) and Uncle Tiger (Kenny Wong). During one of these meetings, we the audience learn that Chau is still bitter that he wasn’t able to kill Jim all those years ago. Jim was directly responsible for the death of Chau’s wife and child, robbing him of a future legacy. Chau was able to get Jim and Cyclone to battle but was unable to track down Jim’s wife and newborn son. I’m pretty sure you can guess who that child is.

I won’t knock Twilight of the Warriors for having some primo-melodrama in its narrative. That’s the type of stuff that Chinese audiences ate up in the past as it has its roots in Cantonese opera. Where the problems start occurring is with its character development, which is just plain lacking. Apart from Lok being the focus, everyone in this movie is essentially a distinctive name and one characteristic. No one grows, changes, or even reflects on anything unless you call glamorizing Kowloon as reflection.

Lok, I suppose, decides he wants to stay in Hong Kong, but that’s not really a personality change. He does also help a little girl when her mother is killed, but nothing ever comes of that as the little girl only appears in one other scene 50 minutes later. A lot of Twilight of the Warriors is just things happening that help establish a mood, but do nothing for character progression.

Most of this is in service of the film’s biggest overall theme: Kowloon, itself. The reason I brought up nostalgia and romanticization, in the beginning, is that there has been a cultural shift in Hong Kong since the Walled City was torn down that has sanitized the image of the establishment. While this film does show a small bit of crime happening within the walls (notably prostitution), it leaves out elements such as exotic meat vendors, drug rings, human trafficking, gun running, and animal fighting. Kowloon was a hotbed for crime because it was ungoverned and practically separate from Hong Kong. Local police often cooperated with triads in the city, furthering the illicit activities within.

While that obviously started to change before Kowloon was torn down (and was possibly at its lowest point when this film is set), the Walled City was not a haven of freedom and family. It was a crime-riddled den that needed to be dealt with. If your only exposure to the city is this film, however, you would believe that it wasn’t such a bad place. That’s the type of nostalgic pandering I think isn’t great.

In a comparison I may come to regret, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In feels like Hong Kong’s version of Deadpool & Wolverine. It’s a film with a fixation on the past that ignores all of its faults to present an idealized version of its subject. Sure, there is a “story” with characters that go on some kind of quest, but it’s mostly in service of glamorizing a specific ideal. Walled In isn’t necessarily the first film to do this, but it doesn’t do anything else with the premise beyond fetishizing the place.

To make one last comparison before I get back to critiquing this film, the 1984 classic Long Arm of the Law not only portrayed the struggle that immigrants had when moving to Hong Kong, but it also showed the Walled City for the gritty, nasty den of crime it was. Johnny Mak’s movie didn’t romanticize his protagonists or their surroundings, lending his film a palpable sense of realism that gave gravity to the action scenes. It also got to film within the walls of the city itself, but that’s a different story.

I do have to commend Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In for getting extraneous details correct, at least. The set design in this movie is impeccable, recreating the atmosphere of oppression that Kowloon had. Reportedly, a life-sized model used for establishing shots was built to get the scale of the city right, which also helped the set designers with where they should place specific shops and how to scale them. This movie really does look like it is in the Walled City despite the place having been gone for over 30 years.

That attention to detail, however, is also something of a detriment. As Soi Cheang is not to do with his movies, one shouldn’t view Twilight of the Warriors as being realistic. It gets a lot of details right, but this is a comic book film by any other name. It starts with a grounded tone and by the midpoint, Mr. Big’s right-hand man, King (Philip Ng), enters the picture and has literal superpowers. He practically does some Naruto hand gestures to give himself iron skin, which allows him to deflect blades like he’s a god. It’s from this point that the action tumbles and never recovers.

A lot of that is because of Tanigaki’s insistence to go bigger and bolder with each film he does, but the most crucial reason is that most of the actors in this movie are not trained martial artists. The inclusion of Sammo Hung and Aaron Kwok might throw you off, but the primary cast are not action stars. Even Louis Koo, who has starred in a bunch of action films, isn’t deeply skilled in fisticuffs. As such, Twilight of the Warriors needs to start relying on gimmicks to fill out the back half of the movie and it just becomes too much.

The final fight is straight out of a Marvel film, save for gratuitous CGI and a skybeam. When faced with a literal god, the characters have to start getting stupid and it robs this movie of consistency. No one else in the film has superpowers unless you consider spinning in the air as some supernatural skill. It would have been fine if more wuxia elements were present throughout the movie or even became gradually introduced as the plot progressed, but Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In doesn’t do that. The production was more concerned with getting the look right rather than making sure everything felt cohesive.

It might sound as if I totally hate this film, but that isn’t the case. A lot of my disdain comes from how hyped-up Twilight of the Warriors has been. In the lead-up to its release, word of mouth has been that Soi Cheang is the savior of Hong Kong cinema and that this movie puts everything else in 2024 to shame. In Hong Kong, itself, the movie even went on to become the second-highest-grossing film of all time. People really want their nostalgia fix.

For me, though, I’m just over that. Maybe it’s the abundance of Marvel nonsense trying to tickle my nostalgia bone every two seconds or broader online culture backsliding into familiarity rather than expanding into the unknown, but I’m simply burned out. I want new experiences and unique premises rather than the same recycled slop.

Do not take this review to mean I am discrediting anyone in the movie. At the end of the day, films are a form of entertainment even if they sometimes transcend that label. Louis Koo is a great actor, Sammo Hung is a living legend, and director Soi Cheang has done impressive work in the past (last year’s Mad Fate is a good example). That they wanted to simply make cheap entertainment doesn’t mean they are getting lazy or have lost all creativity. Hell, a lot of the films from Hong Kong’s golden era were simply that: crowd-pleasers.

What I ultimately don’t like about Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is that it feels like nostalgic pandering without any kind of substance. There is a decent enough story that could be made from these ingredients, but instead, we’re going to get a trilogy of films that continue to idolize Kowloon for all of the wrong reasons. That’s what really stings.