Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In

Soi Cheang balances grandiose action with strong characters in his surprisingly entertaining action adaptation.

“If we win, we win together. If we lose, we lose together too.”

I think, in the years since I started this site, that I’ve laid out what my tastes are. While I certainly appreciate a fine vintage film or a piece of genre-defying art, I also very much enjoy explosive, dumb action films equal parts deadly serious and incredible silly. It’s what makes JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure or the Like a Dragon series so good. And nowhere is my fondness for dumb macho stuff more evident than in how much I actually enjoyed Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In.

Lok (Raymod Lam) is a refugee in 80s Hong Kong (albeit one who speaks perfect Cantonese), looking for an HK identity card. He is scammed by local triad Mr Big (Sammo Hung), and after stealing cocaine in retribution, flees into the infamous Kowloon Walled City. There he meets Shin (Terrance Lau), the second in command to a man named Cyclone (Louis Koo), who has been put in charge of keeping the block safe by its landlord, former gangster Chau (Richie Jen). Lok is put to work by Cyclone and begins to learn the ways of the Walled City, though his time there is threatened when the City’s ugly past rears its head.

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is a mouthful of a title for what is a mouthful of a movie. It’s a film with quite a few moving pieces, and several flashbacks to boot, that betray its soap opera nature. In fact, stylistically it’s quite a lot like the Like a Dragon series: combining over the top action sequences with incredibly serious gangster drama, and it even has its own Goro Majima in the form of Mr Big’s cackling, knife-wielding subordinate King (Philip Ng).

This is all to say that Twilight of the Warriors was a whole lot of fun, and a surprising amount of heart. The film has that distinctive 80s Hong Kong vibe, but made with present day sensibilities. So the action is more heavily edited, and the anime-style fight scenes are slicker, if more cartoonish thanks to an overuse of CGI. The drama and the brotherhood stuff is also way more extra, sometimes bordering on sentimental. It’s John Woo’s best (read: old) films, turned up to 11.

Thematically I enjoyed seeing three huge names of HK action give way to a younger generation of stars. Koo and Hung are both fantastic in their roles, and Kwok’s cameos don’t disappoint, but the real stars of the show are Lam (who, no spring chicken himself has decades of experience), Lau, Tony Wu and German Cheung, whose brotherly ties are the heart of the movie, and whose characters and performances elevate the decent story and push substance … if not necessarily over style, but certainly puts it on par with it.

Without the heart, and its creatively daft action sequences it would have been a shallow showcase of old Hong Kong tropes, wasting good new talent and squandering its legends. Thankfully, director Cheang has lots of experience with ensembles and knows how to tell a good dramatic story without getting too serious with it. It combines the old and new, lamenting that the old ways are often bulldozed, and leaves you with a feeling of community for a place you’ve probably never visited, and a style of film of which you wish there was more.

Verdict: Snobs might hate it, but for me Twilight of the Warriors is a pretty solid blend of over-the-top anime action, nostalgia for old Hong Kong and heartfelt character beats, and that’s sometimes all you need.

Overall entertainment: 7/10
Violence: Hardly realistic, but a very fun 8/10
Sex: One sexually charged shaving scene/10
80s Hong Kong: Still the best Hong Kong
AV: Honestly, your face looks fine, my dude
Soundtrack: Completely out of nowhere theme to the Snowman

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024)
Also known as: Kowloon Walled City
Cantonese

Director: Soi Cheang
Writers: Au Kin-yee, Shum Kwan-sin, Chan Taili , Lai Chun, Yuyi (novel)

CAST

Raymond Lam – Lok
Louis Koo – Cyclone
Sammo Hung – Mr Big
Terrance Lau – Shin
Philip Ng – King
Tony Wu – Twelfth Master
German Cheung – AV
Richie Jen – Chau
Kenny Wong – Uncle Tiger
Aaron Kwok – Jim