The Untold Story (1993)

AKA: Untold Story: Human Mean Roast Pork Buns, Bunman: The Untold Story, Human Meat Pies: The Untold Story

Literally: Bat Sin Store's Human Dumplings

Director: Herman Yau Lai-To

Writer: Law Kam-Fai, Lau Wing-Kin

Producer: Danny Lee Sau-Yin

Cast: Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Danny Lee Sau-Yin, Emily Kwan Bo-Wai, Lau Siu-Ming, Shing Fui-On, Parkman Wong Pak-Man, Yee Ka-Fat, Lam King-Kong, Julie Lee Wah-Yuet, Wong Tin-Fai, Leung Hung-Wah, Cheng Choh-Fai, Lee Yi-Chong, Long Chi, Si Man

Running Time: 95 min.

Plot: Anthony Wong stars as the owner/chef of the Eight Immortals Restaurant, where the original owner and his family mysteriously disappear. As the police, led by Danny Lee, intensify their investigation, they gradually uncover the shocking truth.

Availability: This title is available at HKflix.com

ALVIN GEORGE'S REVIEW: Man, this is a hard film to review. There is indeed some pretty crazy stuff (to say the least) in this docudrama, but the movie's emotional impact is somewhat muted by the comic-relief scenes. Nevertheless, Anthony Wong is quite convincing as the nutcase who turns innocent people into pork-bun fodder. Heck, I'm kinda surprised that Billy Tang didn't direct this!

ALVIN GEORGE'S RATING: 8/10

WOODY'S REVIEW: "If you have a weak stomach...avoid this one. " I made that comment in my original review of this film, and I still stand by it. "The Untold Story" is VERY violent. I'm quite accustomed to violence, so it didn't make me sick or anything, but my jaw was left hanging open in disbelief at just how far it was willing to go, and I strongly recommend that you take into consideration that this is coming from a person completely desensitized to screen violence.

This is not so much a staight-foward review as it is a series of comments. If you want a review, scroll down to Numskull's.

Getting on with it, two words: Anthony Wong. Cocky, conceited, cynical, and one of our best living actors, even if the majority of his movies are shit. This film is basically a showcase for Wong. Every scene without him is dispensable, but those with him are among the most brilliantly acted ever committed to film. His portrayal of Wong Chi Hang elicits both disgust and an odd sort of sympathy, though the man is hardly sympathetic, as the cops beat him, torture him, and deprive him of sleep in order to get a confession. Wong deservedly won the best actor honors at the HK film awards, even if he claims that it "was just politics."

I have never had BBQ pork buns. I never plan to. As Danny Lee puts it in this film "You never know what they use for filling in those things."

I can't use chopsticks for shit. Not that this film's brutal rape-with-a-handful-of-chopsticks-for-good-measure scene has anything to do with that. Women, sensitive men, human beings beware...that is a very icky scene.

Children are graphically slain in this film. Nothing suggested. It is shown in all its glory. Hard-to-stomach, but true.

Most unbearable scene: Wong holding broken glass to a crying boy's throat while his bound and gagged father struggles and cries on the ground.

All of the cops in this film are buffoons. As Anthony Wong said "In Hong Kong film, we put everything in: triads, guns, kung fu...everything but knowledge." The comedy and scenes involving Wong gel a lot better than they should, even if the comedy is extremely out of place in this kind of film,and fails in "lightening" the mood in any way, shape, or form.

All in all, every scene with Wong is brilliant, so brilliant, in fact, that the ridiculous antics of the cops can be overlooked.

WOODY'S RATING: 9.5/10

REEFER'S REVIEW: The Untold Story is a flat out bad film. Herman Yau's film is meant to shock instead of inform and to nauseate instead of make us care.

For 90-some minutes, this narrative is inflicted upon its audience and there is nothing here of value besides another example of Anthony Wong's uncanny ability for playing repulsive human beings. The other male lead, Danny Lee, plays his usual gumshoe role like he's wasting time waiting for a bus. The crew of detectives that surround him couldn't think their way through a Scooby Doo mystery. Instead, they spend most of their time ogling the chain of hookers who hang on Lee's arm in most of his scenes.

I kept watching in the hope that a sympathetic character would find their way (possibly by accident) into a scene, but unfortunately, no luck there. Well, I guess the victims are sympathetic. But they unfortunately get most of their screen time lying in a gooey pile of limbs and blood. Would have loved to be a fly on the wall during the casting session for this film. "Ok, now let me see it. Yea. That's good. You will be right arm number 3. Hold on, let me see that leg too. . . . Ok, where's my carcass number 2!"

There is not one minute of film that delves into the killer's psyche or explains what makes him tick. I guess I was expecting a film like the vastly superior Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. I saw that film a few years ago and still get chills from it. Instead, the filmmakers try to mix in some very juvenile broad humor that seems to belong in a different film. That is not to say that gore films cannot be smart and fun. Dead Alive and Bad Taste, directed by Peter Jackson, are great examples. And Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films also come to mind.

Many reviewers give The Untold Story credit for being edgy. I cannot disagree more. Edgy would be putting characters the audience actually cares about through those terrible situations. Edgy would be creating suspense smartly and logically instead of simply endangering harmless, nameless, screaming women and children. That is the easy way out. Any hack can do that. And yes, it was disturbing, but is that really an achievement?

All the points I give this film are earned through Anthony Wong's performance (although it was one-note) and the nightmare I have now of him showing up on my doorstep.

REEFER'S RATING: 3/10

NUMSKULL'S REVIEW: "We seem to be the only species who truly goes crazy without benefit of disease or a sharp blow to the head." -Jessica Horsting, MIDNIGHT GRAFFITI (copyright 1992, Warner Books)

"Masterpiece" is not a word that I throw around lightly. Pardon me for saying so, but there are certain "critics" on the net who dole out perfect ratings way too easily. It's feast or famine with some people; either a movie is "flawless," "perfect," and "tied with (72 other films) for Greatest Movie Ever Made," OR, it's "worthless," "dog shit," and "enjoyable only by those with I.Q.s of lower numerical value than their shoe sizes." No middle ground? Bollocks.

If you ask me, there's no such thing as a perfect movie, but there are a select few that are so impressive that I can forgive their shortcomings unconditionally. Like what? There's BRAINDEAD (Yours Truly's all-time favorite flick), POLICE STORY (Jackie Chan has yet to top it and probably never will), SEVEN (yeah, that's right, a Hollywood movie...you got a problem with that?!?), and now, THE UNTOLD STORY (which, by the way, is only the second film I've ever reviewed on this site and given a 10/10 rating).

How about music? Can you think of any albums (do they still make those? I guess I should just say "CDs") where you can listen to the whole thing through and not be even remotely tempted to skip a song or fast forward through a small part of one? I can...VEREHRT UND ANGESPIEN by In Extremo, and Kreator's brilliant ENDORAMA (which, by the way, includes "Chosen Few," a song I am going to insist, come Hell or waters high, be played at my wedding reception, in the unlikely event that I ever have one). Not even Skyclad...the greatest band ever to walk the Earth...has such a CD in their discography (which, by the way, has been growing steadily since 1991).

Books (you know, those things with words in them)? Well, the "masterpieces" I had to read in school bored the living shit out of me, and served as a solid basis for my theory that English teachers want to turn kids off of literature in general to prevent them from wanting to become English teachers themselves, thus ensuring their own job security via lack of competition (except for Alexander, of course). So what would I happily slap the "M" word on? Definitely TITUS GROAN and GORMENGHAST by Mervyn Peake, and maybe SURVIVOR (which, by the way, has nothing to do with that crappy TV show) by Chuck Palahniuk, author of FIGHT CLUB (which, by the way, has a much cooler ending than the movie).

Now that I've lost about 70% of my audience by talking about books and the other 30% by shamelessly plugging stuff, I can get on with THE UNTOLD STORY. It's a deliberately nasty, brutal film based on a tragic, real-life story (which, by the way, means it is no longer "untold"). How accurately the events are presented...how much fiction is mixed in with the facts...I do not know. Perhaps it doesn't even matter, because there's so much senseless violence in the real world anyway; the movie painfully drives home the reminder that all sorts of terrible things can happen to anyone at anytime...especially at the hands of another human being.

Anthony Wong is brilliant as the psychotic Wong Chi Hang. He strikes a perfect balance between ultra-violent dementia and false normalcy. The most dangerous sort of lunatic is the one who gives an outward appearance of being a mentally stable, unremarkable (if a little obnoxious, in Wong's case) member of society, letting their insanity out to play only when it is safe to do so (or when they're going to kill all the witnesses...). That's what you can expect to see in this movie. A lesser actor probably would have played the role like an obscene Saturday morning cartoon super-villain, mindlessly slobbering over child pornography and laughing hysterically while beating people to death in public. Wong resists the temptation to play a Satanic Jim Carrey on crack and instead gives us a thoroughly impressive and utterly plausible performance. Small wonder he won the 1993 Hong Kong Best Actor award for it.

Meanwhile, Danny Lee plays a cop for about the 847th time. He regularly picks up prostitutes (or at least loose women) and he bosses around a few men who alternately try to please him, try to score with his chicks, and needle their female colleague about her lack of ladylike characteristics. They get slapped a lot. The darkly comic aspects of The Untold Story revolve around these decidedly UN-Supercops; witness their childish "Eww, gross" reaction to the human body parts that wash up on a beach at the beginning of the movie.

Too much has been made of the whole "people getting chopped up and fed to restaurant patrons in the form of meat buns" business (which, by the way, is somewhat perpetuated by the restaurant-style DVD menus...nice touch). Yeah, it happens, but to say that that's what the movie is "about" would be doing it a great disservice.

There can be no argument that the Category III rating is warranted. Little is held back in terms of raw brutality. Two scenes in particular stand out for being shockingly explicit. I don't want to give too much away; you'll know which scenes I'm talking about when you see them. After reading EXQUISITE CORPSE by Poppy Z. Brite and AMERICAN PSYCHO by Bret Easton Ellis (which, by the way, is so gruesome it makes the movie look like a Disney cartoon by comparison), you can handle pretty much anything, so I wasn't bothered too deeply. YOU might be. And I wouldn't blame you. Watching women get raped and children get butchered ain't for everyone. Remember, though: stuff like this happens to somebody, somewhere, every single day.

The script is very well-done. It would have been easy to throw together a cheesy teen slasher flick-type flow of events where Wong remains on the loose until the very end, when the last fine officer of the law finally brings him down. Mercifully, a much more realistic and satisfying road gets taken. I find it a little hard to believe that the cops would have found the evidence in the garbage truck THAT quickly (and in the dark, no less), but, when my first and foremost quibble is something as minor as that, I'm perfectly willing to look the other way.

I'll definitely be checking out the other Herman Yau/Anthony Wong collaborations, such as TAXI HUNTER and NEW TENANT (which, by the way...oh, shit, I haven't seen it yet so I guess I've got nothing to add here). I'll be one deliriously happy camper if I enjoy them half as much as I enjoyed The Untold Story.

Which, by the way, was one hell of a lot.

NUMSKULL'S RATING: 10/10

YATE'S REVIEW: This is one of the hardest to watch films I have ever seen. Not that it is bad, just really shocking. The killing scenes during the middle of this film are some of the most brutal I have ever witnessed. Anthony Wong is amazing in the role that won him the best actor award at the HK film awards. The only thing I didnt like in this film was the humour involving the cops. It seems like it belongs in another film. Besides that, Anthony Wong's great performance and Herman Yau's direction make this one of the best HK films out there. If you have a weak stomach, though, avoid this one.

YATE'S RATING: 9.5/10

VIC NGUYEN'S REVIEW: Anthony Wong Chau-sang bagged the best actor trophy at the 1993 Hong Kong Film Awards for his relentlessly brutal portrayal of a sadistic murderer in this masterwork from noted director Herman Yau Lai-to. Here, Wong stars as an ill-tempered restaurant chef linked to the true life murders of an entire family, while Danny Lee and co. ham it up as the incompetent police force investigating the case. Although some of the controversy surrounding this film was directed towards it's no-holds-barred approach to it's graphic and brutal depictions of violence, the film received notoriety for the methods in which the killer disposed of the victims meat (baking them into char siu bo, Chinese pork buns). A shocking, but intellegent piece of filmmaking that is definitely not for the squeamish. Note- the best presentation of this film to date is the recent DVD issued by Tai Seng. The image is decent, but is miles ahead of the old VHS tapes, while the Dolby Digital mono sound adequately presents this film (unlike Media Asia's recent 5.1 remixed disasters). But the best part of this package is the extras. 8 trailers of actor Anthony Wong's films are included, and the disc contains 2 commentary tracks, one featuring Wong himself and the other featuring director Herman Yau. These tracks, although sparse in sections, are still entertaining and provide great insight on the film. They are worth the price of the disc alone. All in all, a great package that is a bargain, especially if you love the film.

VIC NGUYEN'S RATING: 9/10