PTU News - Reviews - 1 
Gleaning for fanzines here and there, sites, newspapers and magazines. It starts with a review of PTU appeared
Nocturno Cinema in June 2003.
Good reading.
There was great anticipation and some apprehension for the last Johnnie To (who narrowly missed the competition in Berlin). A director - one of the few - to have shot memorable works after the 'handover
, and that in recent years seemed to have delivered a cynical and greedy procedure based on local consumption of sugary comedies (though
Love on a Diet estimators has above all suspicion) pale and insipid noir and Westernized, the vain search for a global market (such as unwatchable
Running out of time 2 and Full Time Killer , which has some admirers, certainly under the influence of psychotropic substances and chronic orchitis). All films in which Johnnie (a real boss, as confirmed in the video message given to fans before the screening of
PTU) probably did not put his hand, leaving the dirty work on the set to a host of deputy / associate directors. But as in fairy tales, while the pound was Johnnie filmacci with those, in my spare time, in the rare free nights scattered for the period of two years, ran a film in itself,
PTU : a film where he returns to take care of 'ethics of the group, as in The Mission
(but this time from the of the law, in another fully equivalent to that of the underworld) and the ability to survive, as in The Longest Nite
,
Expect the Unexpected . A film that reflects on the legacy of decades of Hong Kong action, such as A Hero Never Dies
. But a film that goes beyond all those just mentioned. What is the smashing, stretching and the removal of the "end". The structure of PTU does not expand it's already expanded. And if there is a growing, not going anywhere, because after all, now, the blood flows to external reasons, tangentially. The blood, in short, has nothing to do anything with the events and the craft. All deflates like a balloon. On the streets of Hong Kong at night and almost abstract, run or walk a cop in search of the lost gun (Lam Suet, now ubiquitous in HK films, and here the role of his career), agents of the PTU (Police Tactical Unit ) patrolling the streets (including measured and charismatic Simon Yam), other CID agents in pursuit of unknown culprits (including stronzissima, Ruby Wong - a demonstration of misogyny not so underground), and of course various gangster , three different bands. The events in this masterpiece (including the beautifully written) do not occur. It 's like all the characters to push forward the resolution of events, to notice that today things acquire significance only if you imagine then when it seems that the time to pull the nodes is close to the comb, there is nothing in his hand, because they are strangers to do the action, create, shall we say,
History. The incredibly long time, even in the dialogues (but very different, attention, compared to the fixed geometry of
The Mission), are there to be filled by the viewer, as if he were to tell people what to say, what to do how to act, what to think. They, the cops, the gangsters, they're there waiting, not knowing. And the soundtrack, classic easy (but also with chitarrone distorted), occupies the space with sentimental emotionality can not find relief elsewhere, precisely because it is difficult to avoid the futility of efforts by the faces, the buildings, the asphalt, from the time beating. And this is very similar to using the music in the cinema of Michael Mann.
Pier Maria Bocchi and Alberto Pezzotta ,
Nocturno Cinema, June 2003
" 
were the last of his works after years of silence. ... Certainly want to say what he thought and to challenge first-person as usual .... Back after the tragic events of September 2001 which affected not only America but the entire free and democratic world. I 
President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano in a message sent on the occasion of the ceremony commemorating the fifth anniversary of the attacks in New York and Washington. 