Other Titles • Time and Tide • Seunlau ngaklau • Shunliu niliu
Synopses for Time and Tide (2000)
1.
Every time you think you've seen everything action movies have to offer, along comes one that makes your jaw drop. Tsui Hark's Time and Tide is one of those movies. The plot careens all over the place like a drunken driver: it starts out when a bartender in Hong Kong named Tyler (Nicholas Tse) sleeps with a lesbian undercover cop and gets her pregnant. To make money to give her to help support the baby, he takes a job with a bodyguard firm run by a loan shark--all of the other bodyguards are men who owe the loan shark money and are trying to work off their debt. The firm gets an assignment protecting a wealthy executive, who has a daughter who's married to a butcher named Juan (Wu Bai) who's actually a former mercenary--OK, this is where things really go off the rails, but never fear: you will not be bothered by the story. You will find yourself caring about these characters, even though you're not entirely sure who they are. You will not be bored for a single moment of this movie, and when you get to the sequence where the mercenary and the head of the heist gang (who are former partners--maybe) are having a shootout while rapelling down the walls of a gigantic Hong Kong tenement, time will suspend and you will gaze in rapt astonishment, unable to understand how anyone could have conceived of these astonishing action sequences, let alone brought them to delirious, stunningly graceful life. Time and Tide is amazing, and Tsui Hark (Peking Opera Blues, Once upon a Time in China, Green Snake) is one of the geniuses of contemporary cinema. --Bret Fetzer
(18 votes)
2.
Trust is fatal.
Hong Kong, present day. A streetwise young man becomes a bodyguard to score quick cash. He soon befriends a once disillusioned mercenary determined to begin life anew with the woman he just married. Although the two men find themselves working together to foil an assassination attempt, their partnership is short-lived - gradually and through uncontrollable circumstances, they will unknowingly be propelled toward opposite sides of a deadly confrontation. High octane action and non-stop thrills from Hong Kong director Tsui Hark.
(17 votes)
3.
Tyler (Nicholas Tse) is a restless, streetwise 21-year-old Hong Kong native who's had trouble gaining the trust of others all his life. He secretly fantasizes about skipping town and living the good life in some remote South American paradise.
After a chance encounter with Jo, an undercover policewoman (Cathy Chui), he learns that she is pregnant, and is forced to deal with the reality of impending fatherhood. Hoping for quick cash, he joins a bodyguard company - but when he tries to give Jo some money, she turns him down, telling him to stay away.
Jack (Wu Bai), Chinese, 35 and disillusioned, has repaired to Hong Kong after spending years in the jungles of Brazil as a mercenary. To him, South America is anything but a paradise: most of his youth and adulthood were spent training with a group who fought rebels on behalf of the government.
Having escaped from Brazil two years ago, Jack has gradually drifted back to Asia, where he's met and married Hui (Candy Lo), a young woman who's now about to give birth to their first child. They are very much in love - but Hui has a past of her own: her long-estranged father, Hong, is the head of a powerful Hong Kong triad.
Tyler and Jack meet by accident, in a toy store. They run into each other again at a birthday ball for Hong, where Tyler is working as a bodyguard. His new boss, Uncle Ji (Anthony Wong), a hard man who has run his share of shady businesses over the years, has been hired to protect Hong.
Jack is at the party to meet his father-in-law for the first time. The meeting doesn't go terribly well - Hong considers Jack unworthy of his daughter. Tyler sympathizes with Jack A friendship is struck.
Jack alerts Tyler to a suspicious-looking waiter who appears to be after Hong. Tyler realizes that the waiter is looking to assassinate Hong, and chases him out of the ballroom. Unfortunately, the killer escapes unseen in an ensuing fracas. Furious, Uncle Ji refuses to believe the story about the suspicious waiter, and blames Tyler for making his operation look bad.
Jack has his share of problems: his past catches up with him when a band of his erstwhile fellow mercenaries, headed by Pablo Santosa, arrives in Hong Kong under the guise of businessmen come to dose a deal with Hong - but their real goal is to kill the triad leader. They track Jack down and accuse him of betraying them before leaving South America. Threatening Hui's life, Pablo and his band force Jack to join them in their murderous plot.
To protect Hui, Jack initially hides her in a hospital. Later - as the killers dose in on her - he takes her to her father's house. It's the last place she wants to go, but he insists it's the safest. As they part, Jack presses into her hand the key from a train-station locker, urging her to get to it if something should happen to him.
For the meeting with Hong, Pablo has hired Uncle Ji's men. Not only is Ji a free-agent gun for hire; it is also understood that his recent assignment at Hong's birthday ball makes him better prepared to protect Pablo and his men at their upcoming meeting with Hong.
Jack foils everyone by taking out Pablo. As Uncle Ji's men set off to capture him, Jack and Tyler are suddenly posted on opposite sides of the fire. Jack is nearly able to make his escape when one of the bodyguards crashes into him. About to shoot the bodyguard between the eyes, Jack realizes it's Tyler, and knocks him unconscious instead.
Jack disappears, and with him the suitcase full of money that Pablo was bringing to Hong. Tyler, mysteriously unharmed by the killer, becomes the front-and-center suspect. Things are dosing in on him from all sides. Interrogated by the police and then temporarily imprisoned by the still suspicious Uncle Ji, Tyler learns from the latter that Jo had tried to help him while he was in jail. More importantly, he understands that the only solution seems to be to find Jack and the money.
In desperation, he tries to break into jades apartment, only to become a target in the shooting match between Jack and the remaining gang, who have been staking out his place. A horrific battle ensues, and in the midst of this Hui comes home to see their apartment in ruins. Remembering the key that Jack had given her for safekeeping, she turns and heads for the train station, hoping the answer to all this chaos lies there.
Tyler sees the fleeing Hui and follows her to the station. The gang is dose on their heels, and behind them, the police. As Hui and Tyler find the money in the locker and begin to struggle over it - neither of them understanding the other's motive - she goes into labor. The gang begins their attack, and Jack fights his way in behind them. Bullets fly. Jack manages to get to Tyler and asks him to help and protect Hui while he fights off the killers. The police and the gang battle it out, and the police captain grudgingly enlists Jack's help when Jack saves his life.
Movie Database
In Theaters
