Back
in the day, it meant boss or community leader, or so the president of the North
Fort crime syndicate tells it. Those days are gone. Now “Gatao” means gangster
and the thugs from the upstart Jian Company intend to live up to everything the
word entails in Yen Cheng-kuo’s Gatao 2 (trailer here), which screens
during the 2018 New York Asian Film Festival.
As
the operational leader of the North Fort syndicate, Ren would very much like to
take over the turf of the North Town gang, but President Gui insists they must
honor the agreement he made with North Town’s late president. Jian Lui, Ren’s
sworn brother from their school days is under no such constraints. Suddenly in the
gangster business, he moves quickly to consolidate the Taipei narcotics trade.
Ostensibly,
he offers to cut North Fort in on the action, but he knows neither Ren or Gui
wish to be involved in the dirty business. Shrewdly, he acts like the offended
party, as he moves to undercut North Fort’s support. Gui even insists on
restraint when the Jian outfit kills one of Ren’s men. The loyal Gatao tries to
toe the line, but it is not long before gang wars erupt on the streets of
Taipei.
We’re
talking about those crazy street fights, where they hang out the baseball bats
and machetes and then just charge at each other. There is in fact plenty of
action in Gatao 2, but there is also a
clash of codes and strategies. Whatever it is that you like in gangster movies
you can find here. Fans should also rest assured, no prior knowledge of Gatao 1 is required to enjoy the
self-contained sequel. However, it is worth noting 1 featured former child star Yen Cheng-kuo (who appeared in The Sandwich Man), while he helmed 2. His involvement with the Gatao duology happened after he served
ten years in prison for a kidnapping-extortion conviction. So yeah, maybe he
can relate to the subject matter. Regardless, he can stage a heck of a street
brawl.
Gatao 2 is the sort of grand
gangster im/morality tale we haven’t had for a while. Jack Kao (one of the few
holdovers from the previous film) sets the tone from the top as the stubbornly principled
President Gui. Collin Chou (from The
Matrix and The Four franchises)
is spectacularly villainous as the snappy dressing Jian. Chang Zhang-xing memorably
stirs the pot even further as Ren’s troubled soldier, Po, but it is Wang
Shih-hsien who really anchors the film as the flinty Ren, who temperamentally stands
equidistance between the fiery Jian and the reserved Gui. Wang also plays it understated,
but you can always see the gangster in him.
