The Untold Story

Herman Yau's Category III landmark takes a real Macau murder case and hands it to Anthony Wong, who plays a restaurant owner working through his staff and eventually a whole family with a cleaver, then solving his disposal problem by folding the evidence into the char siu bao he sells over the counter. Wong is astonishing, and that is the trap, because the film is very well acted and directed and uses that skill to make the murders land harder than any cheap shocker could. The police-procedural framing plays much of it for grubby comedy, then drops you into scenes there is no comfortable way to sit through. It won Wong the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor, which tells you the performance is the real thing. It remains the film people mean when they say Category III. Know what that means before you start.