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The Pathological Cop-Hero Syndrome in Hong Kong Action Cinema

Explore the portrayal of memory, schizophrenia, and the pathological cop-hero in Hong Kong action cinema post-1997, analyzing themes of nostalgia, heroism, and identity crisis. Delve into the intertextual dialogue between films like "Infernal Affairs," "Confession of Pain," and the evolution of cinematic representation. Unpack the psychological and existential condition affecting both characters and viewers, highlighting the disintegration of traditional heroism and the cityscape as an overseeing power.

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The Pathological Cop-Hero Syndrome in Hong Kong Action Cinema

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  1. Lost in the Cosmopolitan Crime Zone: Memory, Schizophrenia, and the Pathological Cop-hero in Hong Kong Action Cinema • Vivian Lee • City University of Hong Kong

  2. Memory, Schizophrenia, and the Pathological Cop-hero • Action, Nostalgia, and the Post-1997 Cinematic Landscape • From John Woo to Johnnie To: the Hero and the City • Schizophrenia and the Pathological Hero: Infernal Affairs and Confession of Pain -- between global screens and local space

  3. The Inferno of No Rebirth • Wu jian dao: the Avicci Hell -- a “high concept” apocalypse • Gina Marchetti: - political allegory rising on the ashes of a failed moral tale; - schizophrenia as HK’s postmodern condition -- depthless nostalgia and a weakening of historical consciousness;- schizophrenia as HK’s identity crisis -- the chameleon's mental breakdown

  4. Failed Nostalgia? Schizophrenia as Meta/Intertext • obsession with memory as psychological symptom • temporal disorder: the continuous hell? • nostalgia as decadence or resistance: an open dialogue between Infernal and Confession

  5. Falling From the Rooftop, Dropping on the Ground, Recycling in Pieces: the Trilogy • the High Concept and the pre- / se-quel: invoking ‘pastness’ • the ‘Good Guy’ and the ‘Bad Guy’: the double as lost ideal and parasite • from ‘Heroism’ to ‘Corporatism’: but the Group disintegrates... • the rooftop, the return to 1990’s gangster films, and the schizophrenic finale

  6. Falling from the Rooftop

  7. History at the Ground Level: returning to the 1990s • cinematic nostalgia operates in the trilogy, intensifying the sense of temporal disjunctions as the narrative return to time past compels a return to the visual codes and motifs of the previous decade that are either absent or de-emphasized in parts 1 and 3

  8. Torn into Pieces: Parasitic Selves/Memories

  9. Schizophrenia: the pathological hero and his ‘para-text’ • memory malfunction and failed nostalgia are the origins of schizophrenia, a psychological/existential condition that not only affects the psychotic hero as spectator, but also becomes part of our experience as the spectator of his vision. • If the schizophrenic/chameleon and the last man standing is a representative of post-colonial Hong Kong, he is also a figure of the film itself – a schizophrenic mind/narrative trying to crossover from one life to another, to reincarnate into something different by hybridizing images old and new.

  10. Confession of Pain: Memory, Retribution, and Redemption • HK 2003 to 2006: death of the vengeful hero and the recovery of an ordinary cop • the hero’s guise: a “good cop” and family man • the hero’s pathology: the alcoholic, the psycho, and the cold-blooded murderer

  11. Framing the Hero

  12. Framing the Hero • the film distances the viewer from the hero, although he is persistently in the foreground in many key scenes. • Instead of encouraging an affective connection between the viewer and the hero, the close-ups and the murder sequences reveal a psychotic behind the hero’s enigmatic face.

  13. A Happy Ending? : The Denial of Redemption

  14. Ominous Locales • the city re-appears as an overseeing power • the top-down perspective: a ‘third eye’ witness • the urban space: affective connections

  15. The Spatial Intertext: two lovelorn cops in a postmodern city

  16. A Darkening Post-card City

  17. Shang cheng, or the Wounded City • “Have you ever lost everything?” • the ending denies its avenging angel the chance of a rebirth, but places this hope on the “everyman” (Takeshi Kaneshiro) • down-beat banality: self-critique?

  18. Confession of Pain is in dialogue with the Infernal Affairs trilogy and its other contemporaries. This intertextual dialogue is motivated by a persistent questioning of pre-existing modes of cinematic representation, the filmmakers’ awareness of their own implication in the making and remaking of such modes of representation, and in effect the displacement/deconstruction of the heroic prototype into fragmented, pathological, and even schizophrenic variants as a response to and comment on the cinematic imagination of the previous decades and the transitory present.

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