It's pretty a pretty well-known Hong Kong film fact that Danny Lee has made a career out of playing cops, and is a staunch defender of the HK police department, to the point where his nickname is "Lee Sir", or "Officer Lee". So it begs the question as to why his 1995 movie Twist (which he both starred in and directed) paints the police in such a repellent light.

Lee has never been known to shy away from the rough stuff when it comes to showing police procedures on screen, as has been copiously displayed in many of his other efforts like Law with Two Phases and Organized Crime and Triad Bureau. There's a reason why his production company is named after Dirty Harry's weapon of choice, Magnum. Like Harry Callahan, the cops in Lee's movies are unflinching and unrepentant (and more than a bit hard-headed) in their desire to arrest and convict criminals by any means necessary.

The criminals in Twist's case are played by Simon Yam and Suki Kwan, who have pulled off a huge armored truck robbery. With only forty-eight hours available to the cops while they have the pair in custody, they resort to some very over-the-top techniques in hopes of extracting confessions.

This is not accomplished via your usual "hammer and phonebook" routine. Rather, we're treated to unsavory bits like Simon getting some buggering with a hose and Suki experiencing penetration (you can guess where) with an ice-filled condom. At least the cops are equal opportunity sadists. All this creative mayhem is done under the guise of not wanting to create any visible wounds on the suspects so that the charges will stick. But wouldn't stuff like drilling into someone's teeth raise at least one red flag?

Perplexingly, if the cops here were anything but brutish buffoons, they wouldn't need to resort to such tactics. There's ample screen time given to the fact that Simon is laundering his ill-gotten gains through his lawyer, played by the wonderfully smarmy Melvin Wong. And, between driving flashy cars and hanging out at yacht clubs, Simon and Suki aren't exactly hiding their windfall.

There is a clumsy and heavy-handed attempt to show how civilized and professional the Hong Kong police are (at least when compared to their Mainland counterparts) by the way of a scene where a couple of members of Simon's gang are rounded up in an almost comically corrupt Chinese prison, where kickbacks and sharpened bamboo cages are the order of the day. But if Danny Lee was seriously trying to portray Hong Kong cops on the whole as noble and brave public servants, he failed miserably.

The better Category III movies succeed because the audience can realize that the upped quotient of boobs and blood are simply used as ways to bring asses into the seats. The seemingly more serious tone employed by Twist only serves to undermine the story as a whole, because by the end of the movie, most anyone with a lick of reason will be sympathetic to Simon and Suki. Sure, they robbed a ton of money and aren't great (or even good) people, but they're the only ones truly hurt, both physically and mentally, during the process. Maybe that's what provides the titular twist.

At any rate, despite the moral qualms one might experience while thinking of the film's base message and the high and exploitative level of violence, Twist is still an unique and interesting take on the usual Hong Kong cops and robbers fare that's worth a look if you have a stomach for the stronger and rougher stuff. At the very least, it will leave you with some questions and points of discussion after watching it, unlike many other films in the genre that simply end up being generic brain-dead fare.

RATING: 6