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"One Last Dance" fuses Eastern and Western sensibilities, featuring characters of a Hong Kong gangster film and the aesthetics and dialogue of New Wave European cinema.
It blurs the lines between different film genres, slipping from a gangster film to a slap-stick comedy to an unlikely love story between a killer and a waitress.
Actor Francis Ng stars as "T", an anonymous hitman who is summoned from the shadows to rid the underworld of those who have betrayed the gangster code.
The intense and versatile actor who has earned the nickname "Mental" has even drawn the attention of legendary Asian actor Chow Yun Fat who says that "the future of Hong Kong film rests with Francis Ng".
One night, in a peaceful part of town, a door smashes open and a gun-wielding gang drags a man with red hair from his lover and his bed.
The man does not cry for help. He doesn’t have to. He is the son of Mr. Sa, a wealthy and powerful gangster, a gangster with connections.
T spends that same evening in conversation with his closest friend and long-time rival, the Police Captain (Ti Lung).
The Captain gives T a golden envelope with a chess move inside – a tradition the two have had for many years – but as he takes the golden packet this time, T realises their game will have to end one day.
After countless years of killing, T – a man with both no vices and no family – decides it is time to retire and leave Singapore while there is still room to move.
The next morning, as he begins to pack, a red envelope arrives. It has no name in it, just a question, "Where is Tatat?".
Like the best killers of any species, T cannot let this one go and plans to hunt for answers as soon as night falls.
That afternoon as he buys his airline ticket, his eyes unexpectedly fall on the beautiful Mae (Vivian Hsu) and, for the first time in his life, something inside him comes undone.
To his surprise, she is the sister of someone he knows very well – his young womanising protégé, Ko (played by Joseph Quek).
Under the guise of joining Ko for a drink, T accompanies the young gangster to the bar where Mae works and is finally introduced to the woman who has caught his fancy.
Duty, however, calls and T heads out to his mailbox finding names of the soon-to-be fallen – names of the men responsible for the kidnapping and killing of Mr. Sa’s son.
T, seeing only a red envelope and a name, is unaware that he is now one of the guilty, and with every killing he will get closer to the ultimate hit – to the person that is both the easiest and the hardest for a professional assassin to kill... himself.
Ko is also suffocating under a new-found pressure - Tatat’s owners, the notorious Ndrangheta mob of Italy, have figured out some of it is missing and Ko is the only one who could have pulled the heist.
It is only a matter of time before this powder keg explodes. And when it does, Ko, Mae, and T are caught in the middle.
According to director Max Makowski, T is a hero from an Opera, not from a newspaper headline or a gangster movie.
"The way he speaks - the way all the characters speak - is not a reflection of "how things are" but rather part of the decoration and a key to the construction of their world - a world set beyond our own".
"This is not to say that T’s world is unreal. On the contrary, his world is so real it lacks the subtlety of real life. It just means that "One Last Dance" is to be enjoyed as a Hero's Tale."
Filmed and edited entirely in Singapore, the film makes use of familiar and not-so-familiar locations such as the Brunei Suite at the Goodwood Park Hotel, the UOB and D’Original Satay Club.
Moviegoers will also recognise special appearances in the film by "The Piano" and "Thelma and Louise" award-winning actor Harvey Keitel and local actress Yeo Yann Yann who plays a lover's wife.
"One Last Dance" screens islandwide on 11 January before its debut in Malaysia on 25 January and in Japan, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg some time next year.
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