REVIEW: 'Accident' (dir. Soi Cheang, 2009)

Accident has a premise that’s fairly irresistible; in short, it’s The Conversation meets the Final Destination series, where the melancholic alienation of the former is mixed with the gleefully sadistic absurdity of the latter. Concerning a ragtag bunch of hitmen who stage deaths to look like accidents, it focuses on the fallout of one member (Louis Koo), still grieving over the loss of his wife in a car accident, and driven into a manic state of delusion and paranoia that someone’s trying to bring their group down, after one of their own staged-accidents goes awry and kills one of their own. It’s a testament to director Soi Cheang’s skill that Accident posits the idea that an actual human being(s) could perpetrate the kind of elaborate, Mousetrap™-style accidental deaths played for lulz in the aforementioned series, while still remaining an utterly dignified and even moving piece of work.

It’s best not to read Accident too literally; Cheang stages his several main set-pieces so elaborately, with such a rigorous orchestration of movement, image, color, sound and music that the instrinsic ridiculousness of these scenes only becomes apparent upon later contemplation (nonwithstanding an instance poor CGI during an otherwise stunning final scene). This is - to indulge in some possible hyperbole - the most cinematically accomplished and stylish genre exercise since Brian De Palma’s 70’s/80’s heyday, and perhaps even taken as a purely non-narrative, formalist piece, it still works like gangbusters. This isn’t to suggest that Accident is a vacuous exercise in style; though the plotting is basic, the film nonetheless becomes a poignant metaphor for the struggle to impose order upon an order-less existence, as our antihero tries to play god and enact his own personal revenge on the forces he can’t control.

In its distillation of the professional-criminal-loner archetype, Accident brings to mind Jim Jarmusch’s recent, much-loathed The Limits of Control. But as much as I admire Jarmusch’s film, Accident never breaks a sweat in its efforts to be About Something; it’s an existential crime flick that, like its protagonist, stays rigorously loyal to the codes and conventions of the genre, and accrues its depth almost by… accident.

Accident is still playing at Hoyts Broadway and Mandarin Centre, so hop to it!