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There’s a strangeness at the core of The Looming Storm; it’s a movie that sometimes seems to unfold like a half remembered dream. I’d be lying if I said I fully understood everything that happened, but the film casts a certain spell that’s difficult to deny.
This film falls into that most uniquely Asian of genres, the small town serial killer mood piece. Don’t come looking for thrills or a mystery in the traditional sense; the drama in these sorts of films come from the quiet, enigmatic interactions of the various characters, few of whom betray their pasts or their secrets very easily. For extra flavor, The Looming Storm offers some trenchant insights into the social and economic culture of small town living: joy is fleeting, the local industry can become your entire identity, and death is just another opportunity to make something of yourself.
The bulk of the film takes place in 1997, the year of the British handover of Hong Kong, an underlying thematic thread that bubbles under the surface of every action taken by just about everyone in the film. In the nameless industrial town where the story takes place a trio of murdered women triggers an investigation. But proud security chief Yu (nicknamed Detective Yu for his knack for sniffing out company malefactors) sees an opportunity to move up in the world and decides to apply his investigatory skills to solving the case himself.
At a certain point, it starts raining and basically doesn’t stop for the rest of the film.
As signifiers go, it does not entirely miss the nose.
Though it’s a certainly overlong and a bit slow for what it means to be doing, it has to be said that director Dong Yue absolutely has the moves down to create a potent noir. The gray, sallow atmosphere evokes the black and white classics of the past, and if Yue doesn’t play with light and shadow quite as much as the past masters, he more than makes up for it with his mud-caked, waterlogged imagery, where everybody seems soaked right down to their souls.
And it’s those moments that most tap into the spirit of noir that shine brightest, none moreso than a breathless chase that sends Yu and his devoted, overeager assistant Xiao Liu (an endearing Wei Zhang) trying to catch up with a suspect, an extended set piece that nearly threatens to unbalance the movie, as nothing that follows carries anything close to the kinetic charge it provides.
While there are many great, quieter moments throughout the film, such as a tender dance between Yu and an escape minded hairdresser (Yiyan Jiang, touching) in her empty salon and a ruthlessly matter-of-fact mass firing at the factory — indicating just how disposable everyone is in the eyes of upper management — the chase remains the highlight of the film. And given how everything else before and after plays out, it almost seems dropped in from somewhere else entirely.
As our protagonist (“hero” seems like overselling it a bit), Duhan Yihong creates a portrait of thwarted dignity and simmering ambition. In true noir fashion, his mission has terrible consequences for pretty much everyone around him, and Yihong does strong work in making his monomaniacal obsession seem less insane.
The spell the film casts is potent indeed. But as to whether the movie actually works or not is a slightly trickier question. It’s difficult to maintain a dreamlike mood for as long as this movie attempts, and there are spots where the movie feels downright slack. And while the third act has its moments, the resolution feels deliberately unsatisfying in a way that feels appropriate to everything that has come before, but with the unfortunate side effect that the whole piece never comes together quite as fully as one might want.
Though not to give too much away, but for those of you out there thinking that the constant rain kind of negates the whole ‘looming storm’ of it all… the film is way ahead of you.
In the end it may not live up to the touted comparisons to Joo-ho Bong’s classic Memories of Murder, but The Looming Storm has its own specific mood and sense of style that can’t be denied.
