After making his directorial debut last year with The Pye Dog, Derek Kwok follows up this time around with The Moss, an atmospheric dramatic offering that takes place for the most part in the low-rent urban jungle that is Sham Shui Po one hot summer. In a recent interview with bc, the movie-maker from that part of Asia’s World City whose lawlessness has made it the modern-day version of the old Kowloon Walled City talked about how the heat and certain of Sham Shui Po’s architectural peculiarities combine to make people feel crazy - “Sometimes,” he says, “when I walk along the street, I really feel that everywhere is just like hell!”
And hell is where Jan (Shawn Yue), the plainclothes policeman protagonist of The Moss, may well feel he is after landing up in the middle of a gangland dispute sparked by Chong (Susan Shaw Yin Yin), a worried mother cum ferocious Triad boss whose precious son has disappeared. Shortly before vanishing, he had told her he would be passing through the territory of rival gang leader Tong (Liu Kai Chi) on his way to present her with a birthday gift. Asked by the formidable older female he respectfully addresses as Godmother to act as her go-between with the other side, the put-upon cop - who hitherto had thrived on both gangland connections and protection from his gun and his badge - encounters intransigence from Tong, and finds himself between a rock and a hard place.
The situation gets significantly hotter for Jan, though, when Tong is killed, his bedraggled hired assassin (Louis Fan Siu Wong) badly beats up Jan’s prostitute lover Lulu (Bonnie Xian) and absconds with her 11-year-old sister, Fa (child actress Shi Zue Yi, giving a mature, assured performance an adult could be proud of). With Lulu lying unconscious in hospital, Jan decides to track down and get her younger sister out of the clutches of the physically strong man who has shown that he can be very dangerous indeed. And this even without Tong’s erstwhile right-hand man, the Cantonese-speaking ethnic Indian Singh (Gill Mohinderpaul Singh), providing Jan with even more reason to hunt down the shadowy hit man who seems to have come from nowhere to upset his already less than ideal life.
From his conversations with Fa, however, it is revealed that the unnamed assassin is from Mainland China like Fa and her sister. The title of the movie refers to that mystery man’s view of himself as the small and low maintenance but tough plant which lies low and survives while more prominent species, like trees, attract the attention liable to get them chopped down. As it turns out though, his better instincts go against this, and he is unable to resist being the saviour of the young girl he strikes a bond with even while deciding she - who possesses both an inner as well as outer beauty - is more of a flower than a fellow moss. And so this unlikely figure turns out to be the twist-filled work’s real hero, as much as Fa is revealed as the female with the largest role in this darkly intriguing movie - one in which red herrings abound and expectations are frequently turned on their head.

Yvonne Teh