It’s a great movie. I loved it, and that’s rare, given the essence and quality of movies these days. But if you are the teary type or just PMSing, do NOT under circumstances go watch it. Unless you are bent on embarrassing yourself, like I did, then don’t. It’s a gritty raw film that explores the addiction to drugs and the tenacity of the grip that drugs have on the sanity and reason of addicts. Andy Lau was fantastic as the self justifying good guy/ bad guy drug lord and the little girl (I don’t know the name) was really perfect for the role. She was natural, innocent and tugged at my heart strings like a sonata on violin.

Yes, throw in a little girl with a drug addict mother, and I am ready to roll with the tears. Yes, yes I am a disgusting crybaby when it comes to little girls. And the worst thing about me is that I get so engrossed.. I can actually feel myself in the role of the actor as in how he or she would feel in that particular frame. And so, in the time frame of barely 1.5 hours, I felt a myriad of emotions like anger, disgust, shock, fear, nostalgia, sadness and more abject sadness. It was so bad that at times, I was struggling to hold back the tears.

A bit of a spoiler here, if you intend to go watch the movie, don’t read on. Basically it’s about a little girl about 4 or 5 years old, and her drug addict mother and father, who later appeared in the movie and terrorised mother and child. Scene shots of the little girl removing the needle from the mother’s arm after she is unconscious on the couch, and of the little girl being starved out of her mind because the mother didn’t feed her really got to me. And a particular scene where she is being dressed up in her uniform and school bag and she was so happy that she was finally getting to go to school; but actually her scum of a father was only making use of her to sell pills, really pushed me over the edge. It was so heart-wrenching to hear her keep asking when she is going to go to school. It made me think of this case in Singapore where a drug addict mother made use of her eight year old son to go buy drugs for her. It’s really sad.

And so, it was rather embarrassing for me as I was out with Mr Big and was struggling to refrain from sobbing right there and then. Thankfully it was a midnight show and therefore not so many people. There was only one other girl in the audience and according to Big (cos I was too busy bawling my eyes out) she was also tearing up and her boyfriend was hugging and comforting her. Sigh.

Honestly, when I told Big that I wanted to watch the show, it’s because the trailers seem so very Infernal Affairs and I thought the show was about drug lords, busting drug drops and all that. Macho stuff and guns you know. Little did I know what I was in for.

A dialogue from the movie did its echo of significance in my mind.

Why do people take drugs? It’s because of the emptiness inside. So which is more frightening, the drugs or the emptiness?

I would say it’s the emptiness. It’s engulfing, may times worse than loneliness and many times more difficult to get out of.

Been there.

I feel so blessed and protected that even in my darkest moments, and in the period when I moved out when I was young and did a whole lot of wild partying, I never did fall into the abyss of drugs.

I guess what the bible says is true. God will never test us beyond more than what we can bear.

Anyway, the movie affected me so much that I couldn’t speak on the way home, for fear of bursting into tears and freaking Big out, and I had to lock myself in the bathroom and had a good eye cleansing session for a bit before I feel safe to be able to speak normally to Big.

It’s such an embarrassment.

Note to self: avoid all potential tearjerkers when PMSing.

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