Chungking Express Shot on a shoestring in less time than it takes most filmmakers to roll out of bed in the morning, Chungking Express is one of the most enervating, visually radical movies of the '90s, even as it rushes to embrace the collective spirit of cinema past (particularly the French New Wave). Hong Kong wunderkind Wong Kar-Wai whips up a lighter-than-air confection that is both maddeningly inscrutable and improbably charming, composed of dual stories concerning nameless, lovesick cops and their romantic obsessions. Through nervy, aggressively stylized hand-held camerawork, hyperbolic jump cuts and playful manipulations of time, Wong captures Hong Kong as a gaudy, florescent global village, teeming with disorienting exotica, chance encounters, wigs, sunglasses and Western pop music. As much as it can be said that Jean-Luc Godard was able to encapsulate the birth of the universe via the metaphor of cream swirling in a cup of coffee, Wong updates us and pulls off the same trick using a tin of expired canned goods. Wong's narrative stream is a bit threadbare, and his sense of innocence sometimes feels more forced than sincere, but all is forgiven in light of the film's abundance of brilliant moments. Miramax's new DVD edition of Chungking Express features an interesting and appealingly heartfelt introduction and wrap-up by Hong Kong movie enthusiast and sometimes filmmaker Quentin Tarantino — but other than that, this is a pretty bare bones edition. Still, a picture is worth a thousand words (and worth a thousand, thousand supplemental features), and the picture on the DVD is about as nice as they come. The crisp, intense 16-by-9 enhanced widescreen image is extremely satisfying all by itself and a perfect window to Wong's constantly imaginative compositions and fantastic, color-coded world. Not many frills here but still the definitive version of this wonderful film.
—Lance Goldenberg 
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2002.