Johnnie To Kei-Fung's PTU

Michael Ingham, Johnnie To Kei-Fung's PTU, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2009,149 pp.

ichael Ingham, an associate professor at Hong Kong's Lingnan University, continues the work begun by a series of authors and critics specialising in cinema, Hong Kong, or both, in a collection dedicated to New Hong Kong Cinema and launched by Hong Kong University Press in 2003.

Ingham illuminates his reading of PTU, directed by Johnnie To in 2003, by the light of his own background in theatre studies and literature, as well as his Francophilia, tools that are unusual but which prove useful for penetrating the universe of this feature film and decoding its meaning. In his book, Ingham takes a contrary view of Johnnie To's reputation and the prejudices surrounding PTU with the idea of cultivating his analysis with two main intentions. He sets out not just to re-evaluate the status of Johnnie To as a cinematographic auteur in his own right, and more particularly as a representative of a certain genre cinema, but also to reassess his film PTU, widely underappreciated by the critics, the public, and the industry, but considered by Ingham as one of the most accomplished works of this extraordinary filmmaker.

In contrast to other books in the collection, this work does not start with a summary of the film - the issue here undoubtedly lies outside of the minimalist storyline - but defines at the very outset the place occupied by Johnnie To in the Hong Kong cinema landscape, then situates PTU in its historical and aesthetic context. This initial contextualisation is then developed point by point throughout the remainder of the book. Ingham thus underlines the crucial...