Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

ShangLuda Admirable film.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

crogerlin "As Tears Go By", which was the directorial debut of director Kar-Wai Wong, doesn't look like a movie that was filmed by a rookie at directing. On the contrary, the movie is filled with director's personal style, which includes fast editing and slow motion with blurred images.Sometimes, the editing of "As Tears Go By" was so fast that I felt like it had jumped to another part of the story, which is quite different from other movies I've watched, and confused me a little bit. However, there were still some great scenes that were made by fast editing, which excellently enhances the emotions and thoughts of the characters and the plots.When filming the action scenes, director Kar-Wai Wong used slow motion with blurred images, which I think is a genius idea to express the mess in actions, and in characters' minds as well. Nonetheless, when it came to the crucial parts of the plots, the picture became clear, revealing not only to the characters in the movie but also to us watching it what really happened.The acting in "As Tears Go By" is also brilliant, especially Jacky Cheung starring as Fly, and Maggie Cheung as Ngor. The point that this movie touches me the most is the brotherhood between Wah and Fly. Thanks to Jacky Cheung's great performance, I literally felt the rage, disappoint, sadness and many other kinds of emotion from Fly. Moreover, Ngor is another character that amazed me. Although she looked calm on the outside, her expression gave me a feeling that deep inside, there were more than that. And finally Maggie Cheung let the audience go inside her heart and delivered a performance I will never forget.

Vladimir There is an inherent danger in looking retroactively at early films from established directors. As with Jarmusch's "Permanent Vacation", Bertolucci's "The Grim Reaper" or even Kubrick's "Killer's Kiss", it can be difficult - after garnering an admiration for a director - to look back at their less refined beginnings.Such is the case with Wong Kar-Wai's As Tears Go By (Wong gok ka moon). During the film's early stages, it feels somewhat like an unhappy coupling between a flashy Hong Kong martial arts film and those really cheesy Chinese serials where the emperor's daughter accidentally falls pregnant to the chief eunuch warrior (or whatever, I've never watched one with subtitles). Having said that though, it doesn't quite reach the extremes of either: firstly because the action and violence, although the driving force of the film, are not in the least stylised but are in fact quite confronting; and secondly because the cheese of the soap opera elements is really only apparent through the use of dodgy 80's music. But this is simply dated, not inappropriate - after all, the same could be said about Blade Runner, although the montage about halfway through this film set to a Cantonese version of "Take my Breath Away" is just embarrassing.As Tears go By also happens to get better as it progresses. Perhaps this is because the romance between Ah-Wah (Andy Lau) and Ah-Ngor (Maggie Cheung), which seems ready to overpower the film early on, becomes sidelined to the underground-crime half of the plot, which is certainly the most successful and believable half. Wong craftily creates a hard-boiled atmosphere and there is a lot of emotional resonance in the relationship between Wah and his young protégé, Fly (Jacky Cheung). Unfortunately, the same cannot really be said of the male-female relationship between the two stars. It manages to gain a small amount of credibility purely through the fact that we have seen the quiet girl-bad boy romance explored to greater depths in other films. Put this small amount of believability aside however, and it has a very tacked-on, Michael Bay kind of feel to it.Although the film is easily criticised, one can nevertheless see Wong's style making its first appearance here, and I can certainly see the justification behind one reviewer's quote on the DVD case: "A promising debut". I would like to particularly single out his clever use of intimate but skewed, 'Dutch' camera angles to highlight the (forgive me for this expression) humanistic dehumanisation which would foreground his more recent and more famous films, "In the Mood for Love" and "2046". He also drives the film at an excellent pace, in spite of the fact that alternations between the subplots give it a slightly episodic, fragmented feel.Ultimately, my major complaint is simply that while both the romance and the action have a great deal of potential, used together in this way they don't work. Personally I think Wong could either expand on the romance more or eradicate it entirely, and he would have a more complete film.And while hoping not to contradict myself, I have to say that the above comments, which pervaded my thoughts for 90 minutes of this film, were quite rocked by the superb conclusion - framed within criminal violence but so much 'about' the romance - let me just say, whatever I may have thought about most of this film, it was definitely worth it for the ending. Overall, interesting mainly for being Wong's debut and definitely a taste of things to come.6/10

tedg No better one day film school can be found in watching "Mean Streets" and then this.Superficially they seem the same and Kar-Wai has told us that he patterned this, his first feature after Scorsese's first.Here's the lesson: Scorsese belongs to a school of thinking where actors create characters, real extreme and powerful characters. These characters literally create the situations around them. The filmmaker's job is to attach the camera to the characters. Nearly all Italian and Italian-American filmmakers believe this. This is fine if you can live on espresso, but most of us in a film life need something to sustain us.Kar-Wai in his later films is clearly in another camp. He literally starts with no script. He creates a cinematic tone. Into that tone is spun a place and his actors are expected to find their way within it. Only then do we see characters, and the camera is never, ever glued to personalities.It is a world of difference, as different as people who can talk only about other people contrasted to those who can create another world in a conversation.Sooner or later, all lucid watchers must make a choice about how big their film universe can be. This was Kar-Wai's beginning. It is hard to see unless you know his later stuff. But it is there, like the pollen in the air.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

pegasus8228 while Wong Kar Wai's movies are watchable even thought there is no real story. this movie has one, and it is his best achievement. the 2 best HK movies in the 1980's are A Better Tomorrow and As Tear Goes By. But this movie somehow had not got the attention abroad