After sitting on the shelf for seven years, Juno Mak’s long-delayed Sons of the Neon Night has finally reached theaters. While the film hints at ambition and visual flair, it ultimately delivers a confusing and underdeveloped experience that feels both overstuffed and incomplete.
Set in an alternate, snow-covered version of 1990s Hong Kong, the story begins with promise. The opening scene introduces Moreton Li (Takeshi Kaneshiro), the heir to a pharmaceutical empire, waking up in a luxurious penthouse built into a decommissioned tunnel. It’s an imaginative setup that suggests a richly imagined world — but the film never expands on this vision.
The plot centers on a convoluted drug trade, beginning with a chaotic shootout in a public square carried out by masked criminals. Despite strong visuals, the sequence feels unpolished, like a rough draft of a much better scene. Action is surprisingly sparse, and when it does return much later in the form of a hand-to-hand combat scene, it lacks emotional weight due to shallow character development.
New plot elements and characters are introduced rapidly and without much clarity. A key moment — a suicide bombing at a hospital where Moreton’s father is being treated — raises more questions than it answers. Soon, grizzled cop Wong Chi-tat (Sean Lau) is brought into the mix, but even his backstory is rushed through in quick voiceover. Additional characters keep arriving every 20 minutes or so, each with their own subplot, turning the film into something that feels more like an incomplete TV series than a self-contained movie.
Despite its sprawling ambitions, Sons of the Neon Night struggles to build narrative momentum. Conversations are drawn-out and often awkward, with little payoff. The film attempts to explore themes of human nature, addiction, and corporate corruption, but these ideas are undercut by a lack of focus and cohesion. Even the score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto feels wasted, filling emotional voids rather than enhancing meaningful moments.
In the end, Mak’s film is rich in atmosphere but poor in storytelling. Sons of the Neon Night aims high with its philosophical musings and stylized visuals, but delivers little substance beneath the surface. After seven years in limbo, it may have been better left unfinished.
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