Next up is To Be Number One, a romanticised/glorified version of the story of Limpy Ho, one of Hong Kong's most notorious drug lords. The story follows Limpy Ho (Ng Ho-sik - played by Ray Lui) from his beginnings escaping the Communist-fuelled famine in the Mainland, and his rise up through the ranks and power of the Hong Kong triad gangs as he peddled opium and heroine from noodle carts in Shek Kip Mei.
Ray Lui chews up the scenery and even appears to be emulating Marlon Brando's "Godfather" as later in the film it looks like he has stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool to appear fatter. The film was obviously made before the real Ho passed away from cancer in 1991 because the end credits state that he was released in 1995 (in reality he had already had his sentence reduced and was living in supervised hospital care for the remainder of his life).
The opening scene shows Ho (Lui with dyed-grey hair) in his later years as he attends a church service and then looks back on his life. These scenes themselves are now part of their own history because the real-life chapel where this was shot was St Peter's Church located in the recently-demolished old Mariner's Club. The church was deconsecrated in 2018 and the building handed over to the developers in 2020. It has since been replaced by a monstrosity at least three times taller than the original building.
4 comments:
There are some nice locations (and cars), so looking forward to this and not only because I shared a laughably slow elevator ride with Ray one day in the mid-90s. I hadn't seen this in nearly thirty-years until I encountered it again on hotel TV in 2020. I rewatched it multiple times there along with Cops and Robbers (1979), The Saviour (1980).
So has the foreign productions well finally run drier than my wallet?
I've managed to track down some good locations for this one, far more than expected. I think the foreign productions well has definitely run a bit dry, but having said that I have another one lined up after this. It's barrel scraping though, so don't get too excited...
I remember having the Made In Hong Kong video tape of this back in the day. Just wacthed the trailer on YouTube. I remember bits of it. Probably need to revisit it at some point
I quite enjoyed it. Definitely one of the better productions I've seen of late.
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