Night King review – Hong Kong hostess bar comedy is a love letter to old-fashioned Kowloon nightlife | film

TIts glossy, gauzy homage to old-fashioned Cantonese nightlife sometimes feels like a Wong Kar-Wai film — but it’s actually closer to something like Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Hong Kong comedy star Dayu Wong plays Foon, the manager of EJ Entertainment, the last nightclub standing in the fading East Tsim Sha Tsui district. The company’s takeover suddenly means that his ex-wife Dame V (Cantopop singer Sammi Cheng) is in charge and intends to replace the regular flight attendants there to con customers with “fighter jet” upgrades.

Once Foon and V start sparring over how to run the joint, they discover that there’s a takeover within the takeover: playboy Prince Fung (Chun Yip Lo), V’s partner in the original deal, is committing dirty deeds on her and withdraws. As guarantor of the contract, V will either raise the $80 million needed to buy EJ, or be responsible for cancellation fees — when Fung plans to swoop in for a pittance. So the ever-soft-touched Foon agrees to team up with his no-nonsense ex, all in order to save the dazzle of nostalgia.

Directed by Jack Ng – also responsible for the brilliant 2023 legal drama Guilty Conscience – Night King feels sadly backwards in its parade of what the tabloids once described as a “swarm of beauties”; They’re a bit idiosyncratic and mostly foils for the vile comedy provided by Foon and his right-hand man Turf (Yeung Wai Lun). Compared to the likes of Hustlers, it’s also strangely shy and sterile about what this down-and-out job entails. The lack of rawness and chemistry carries over to V (the only truly proactive woman here) and Foon’s renewed relationship; Their quarrels over past disappointments and sharing “problems, not wealth” are almost as contrived as the chatter between the flight attendants.

The film juggles a number of plot points – Foon and the girls’ race to increase their numbers, the love triangle between him and V and the spare wheel steward (Fish Liew), and the recent Ocean’s 11 scam that is a foregone conclusion – without any of them having a satisfying closure. There’s a sharp, strange line: “Bring them there and then bring them back again, like a hobbit,” says Vaughn of the gamblers. But in terms of getting into the nitty-gritty of hospitality and the sex trade, this glassy nod to the lounge lizard in bygone Kowloon feels like it has fallen behind the times.