Time and Tide poster & wallpaper

Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Candy Lo, Cathy Tsui

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. A...( read more  read more... )lthough 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.

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3,728 ratings

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64% liked it

44 critics

R, 1 hr. 53 min.

Directed by: Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Candy Lo, Cathy Tsui, Couto Remotigue Jr., Hark Tsui, Nicholas Tse, Wu Bai

Release Date: October 1, 2000

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DVD Release Date: August 7, 2001

Stats: 165 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (165)

  • DragonEyeMorrison
    October 1, 2009
    DragonEyeMorrison
    I can forgive a lot of things to a HK movie: bad script, bad acting, low production values, if i get a good chainsaw fight or something equally over the top i'm a happy man. But some HK movies just can't hide the fact that they're extremely generic and easy to forget. Time and Ti...( read more)de tries way too hard to stand from the rest with some silly camera tricks that end up being far from "cool" and actually very annoying. Hark, just watch The Killer again, that movie works because, among other things, i can see who is shooting who, not because i could see a bullet coming out from the inside of a gun in first person view.
  • FangsFirst
    April 11, 2008
    FangsFirst
    Yet another foreign film I knew absolutely nothing about, it turns out that screenwriter and director Tsui Hark in fact produced some of the most renowned Hong Kong action films (alas, I have seen none of them). I had seen a trailer for this one, though, on one of the other DVDs ...( read more)I've purchased, so I did at least know it was an action-oriented film. What I did not expect was the tightly bound mess of characters, plot lines and actions that came before me. It's also one of only three Cantonese-spoken films I own.

    Tyler (Nicholas Tse) is a 21 year old bartender who takes a drinking bet with a jilted lesbian, Ah Jo (Cathy Tsui), and winds up in bed with her. She is angry the next morning and practically throws herself out of his apartment, then checks a calendar and slumps in the elevator as she's leaving--obviously she was ovulating. Nine months later, Tyler is attempting to help Ah Jo, who rejects all of his attempts, well-intentioned though they are. He eventually begins to take loans from "Uncle Ji" (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang), a local loan shark who has begun asking for payment on said loans by turning those who have taken them into a bodyguard service. In the process of guarding Hong, father of Ah Hui (Candy Lo), Tyler meets "Jack" (Wu Bai), the husband of the very pregnant Ah Hui and suggests the two start a bodyguard agency of their own, Tyler intending to make money to give to Ah Jo in place of his unwanted fatherhood, and suggesting that Jack will also need money for his coming child. In the meantime, the "Angels," led primarily by Miguel (Couto Remotigue, Jr.), are a team of South American mercenaries who have taken interest in Jack--who used to work with them--and want him back or dead, and have made their way to Hong Kong to achieve this goal. Jack wants nothing of this and makes this very clear, with Tyler attempting to survive and in some ways tag along, having been incriminated in an increasingly spiralling plot of interconnected lives and agendas.

    Tse gives a great performance as the enthusiastic everyman kid who is in over his head, but who is skilled enough to still be respectable in our sympathy for his plight, while the slightly less photogenic Bai is unbelievably collected, professional and, frankly, badass, as the mercenary who has abandoned his past, but not his skills. And those skills--good grief! I thought I had seen enough stunts and wire work and so on to think little of anything to come, but the brilliance here comes from the fact that somehow it looks like these men were trained to do completely absurd things, like jumping into the air to land on someone's shoulders, or rappel down the side of an apartment building while firing an automatic rifle. Not as if they have been trained to enact it for this stunt, but as if they have practiced and learned how to respond to any physical environment, change or threat in ways that should be unbelievable yet somehow aren't. Married to this is a style that uses tricks that are not something we've never seen--such as travelling into the mechanics of a gun as the trigger is pulled, or POV shots--but that manage to feel both fresh and appropriate and smooth in their transition, with some added kicks adding something new anyway--like a woman taken for an unexpectedly rough car ride being seen from her own eyes, the camera wobbling with her unsteady steps until we pull back and turn to freeze frame on her nauseated face, just as she is about to vomit, thereby managing to convey the strength of this reaction without the viewer nausea of seeing the actual vomiting (though Hark happily does this after the drinking binge Tyler and Ah Jo take part in at the beginning).

    I've intended to see the Hong Kong classics like Hard-Boiled for ages now, and have yet to do so, but I think this has a speedier, more kinetic approach, if my eyes are to be believed when compared to the progression of these styles into American film. Slow motion is rare, and this kind of rapid martial arts action, and especially environment-based stunts (flipping over banisters in stairways and so on, regardless of an opponent's direct, physical involvement)--something I understand is more a product of the last decade than those early Woo films, but this is purely conjecture on my part as I'd rather be surprised by those films as well. It's more reminiscent, though, of the intricate, elaborate scenes Jackie Chan achieved notoriety for stateside, but without any of the carefully planned and staged feel, the most important thing in this whole approach to action is that sense of believability despite the complete ridiculous insanity of them.

    Bloody awesome action film, one I will have to push on the action fan(s?) I know.
  • alanjayh
    April 12, 2008
    alanjayh
    Hard plot for me to follow..but great cam work and nick does his usual best...enjoyed the action sequences..entertianing if a bit confusing...
  • kawaiimaus999
    August 31, 2009
    kawaiimaus999
    i love this movie with nicolas tse...absolute fantastic...^^
  • gravityandgrace2003
    December 24, 2008
    gravityandgrace2003
    Time and Tide is the first movie Tsui Hark made upon his return to Hong Kong after making two very underrated (read: awesome!) movies with Jean Claude van Damme. This movie is essentially what you would get if you mix some existential John Woo heroic bloodshed gunplay/homoerotic ...( read more)bond between dudes with Fight Club and Assassins and put it all in a blender within Tsui's bizarre imagination. Nicholas Tse has never acted better than in T&T, and Wu Bai delivers a stellar performance as the cool-as-shit hitman. Some shots seem totally lifted from Fight Club, but it's really more style than in story. Tsui Hark's trademark energy is in full force here, and the reflective exposition gives the audience the necessary time to really care about the characters. A must for HK cinema fans.
  • husky10000years
    September 2, 2008
    husky10000years
    Time and Tide works on two levels, as a dramatic film and as an action film, both benefiting from each other. The action becomes more intense because the audience cares for the film's characters, and at the same time the drama is more emotional because the audience wants t...( read more)he characters to succeed in their redemption. This movie occupies a unique place in the action-cinema genre. One of the best Hark Tsui's movie.
  • gmacqueron
    July 7, 2008
    gmacqueron
    Super film d'action asiatique! un de mes préférés.
  • youkaishinigami
    January 30, 2008
    youkaishinigami
    I got interested and I don't know why
  • skactopus
    January 30, 2008
    skactopus
    Nothing out of the ordinary here, unless you haven't seen a Tsui Hark film before. Basically, this is your typical Hong Kong crime action movie with a Tsui Hark twist to it.

    The first 5 minutes of the film is actually deceiving. The story actually feels like a romantic comedy

    ...( read more) of sorts. A few minutes later the film takes a turn and you now have the action adventure you should be expecting. The thing with Tsui Hark is that his cinematography and editing can make any type of film feel frantic. What would usually be a moderate to slow paced film actually feels like a thrilling roller coaster ride. While this is fine and dandy it can also confuse the viewer and throw off what should be a simple story. With that said, the first half of this film isn't anything spectacular and the action is somewhat limited. There is more of a focus on character buildup, which isn't too bad. The last 40-50 minutes of the film is all one big Tsui Hark stylized action sequence. Fairly entertaining.

    Like other Hark pieces, the action is different from other films of this genre and the choreography is quite good. What really sucks here is the editing and camera shots. At times it is good, but at many other times, and not just in this film, the fights become degraded by this. If it wasn't for Hark's editing and camera work, the action sequences could be impressive.

    The acting is pretty good for this type of film. Nicholas Tse is a good lead and most of the supporting cast is up to par. The only disappointments are the villains. They have a bunch of English lines and we all know how those turn out most of the time. It isn't as bad as other films though.

    The only people I would recommend this film to are fans of Tsui Hark or people in need of a different style of action film.
  • kingmob6
    January 14, 2008
    kingmob6
    Really beautifully shot action film, this one actually has a lot of heart as two soon to be fathers find themselves becoming friends only to end up on opposite sides of a climactic battle.

    Recommended.

View All Time and Tide Reviews

Critic Reviews

August 9, 2001
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

Goofy, outlandish and exhilarating. full review

May 21, 2001
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

The presence of flesh-and-blood actors and stunt people create an urgency lacking in the obviously fabricated Mummy effects. full review

View more Time and Tide reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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