As Tears Go By

A low-level hoodlum on the bloody streets of Hong Kong’s notorious Mong Kok district must choose between a woman’s love and fealty to his hotheaded blood brother in Wong Kar Wai’s feature debut, which provided enough fistfights and street battles to please audiences while debuting the mood-drenched atmospherics and unabashed romanticism that would define his career. Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung (in a role she credits as making audiences aware of her dramatic potential), and Jacky Cheung star in this triad opera, “a tragic study of little people in a big city” as Wong himself described it, filmed furtively amidst Mong Kok’s “life in the raw.”