Time Out film editor Edmund Lee celebrates 100 years of Hong Kong cinema with a list of our city’s very best movies.

| 100 - 91 | 90 - 81 | 80 - 71 | 70 - 61 | 60 - 51 | 50 - 41 | 40 - 31 | 30 - 21 | 20 - 11 | Number 10 | Number 9 | Number 8 | Number 7 | Number 6 | Number 5 | Number 4 | Number 3 | Number 2 | Number 1 |

Election 2 黑社會：以和為貴 (2006)

Dir Johnnie To (Louis Koo, Simon Yam, Nick Cheung, Lam Ka-tung)

“I can also make you a deal. I can also be a patriot.”

Fans of Hong Kong gangster flicks breathed a collective sigh of relief when Johnnie To ended the genre’s post-Young and Dangerous impasse with his majestic two-part epic. Taking off from Election’s (2005) near-anthropological interest in the triad society’s origins, the veteran action auteur merges wit and gore in a disturbingly resonant political satire – very astutely disguised as a stylistically subdued dramatisation of the power struggles surrounding the biannual voting process at the top of ‘Hong Kong’s oldest triad’. A slow-burning crime caper spiced with occasional bursts of sadistic brutality (most memorably, a character is literally ground up and fed to the dogs), Election 2 is further enhanced by its political subtext: the candidates here, elegantly played by Koo and Yam, are not only trapped by their own lust of power or wealth, but also the mainland Chinese government’s omniscient influence on their handover of power. At its most ingeniously cynical, the film has made a mockery of our simplistic capitalist ideals and democratic aspirations in the very same stroke.

See also:
- Our exclusive interview with Chow Yun-fat
- Their top five personal favourites
- The perfect Hong Kong film
- Top 5 ‘not-quite Hong Kong’ films

| 100 - 91 | 90 - 81 | 80 - 71 | 70 - 61 | 60 - 51 | 50 - 41 | 40 - 31 | 30 - 21 | 20 - 11 | Number 10 | Number 9 | Number 8 | Number 7 | Number 6 | Number 5 | Number 4 | Number 3 | Number 2 | Number 1 |