ReviewSons of the Neon Night movie review: Hong Kong crime thriller is a striking watch

Few Hong Kong films have arrived with as much anticipation as Juno Mak Chun-lung’s Sons of the Neon Night. A hyper-stylised crime thriller with a reported HK$400 million (US$51.4 million) budget and a star-studded cast, it was shot between 2017 and 2018 only to be shelved until its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May this year.

The long delay has only added to the film’s enigmatic aura. Set in an alternate-reality Hong Kong of 1994, so much has transpired in the interim that the brooding noir now feels less like a follow-up to Mak’s 2013 directorial debut, the horror gem Rigor Mortis, and more like a relic from an unknown past.

The film’s most famous composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, died in 2023; its lead, Takeshi Kaneshiro, has not appeared on screen since 2017; and Hong Kong cinema itself, amid a shifting political landscape, has ceased to worship criminals so charismatic or policemen this utterly corrupt.