Monga

A-

Good-looking tapestry of gang motifs.

******************************************************************

Every country with a film industry makes movies about gangs of youths, to satisfy ready-made audiences eager to buy tickets for big-screen battles starring their proxy selves. Taiwan's 2010 successful version of the genre, set in the mid-1980s, was Monga.

Named for an old rough and raunchy Taipei district, the movie shows locale-specific scenes of young male bonding, homoerotic friendship, street battles and adult gang reality. Five stereotypical young men have fun and games and fights, following character outlines that highlight comic cuteness or simple-mindedness, dramatic leadership qualities and perfectly-posed outsider stares.

Director Doze Taipei 24H Niu (who also plays a mainland gangster) and the excellent cinematographer (Taiwan-resident Jake Pollock, Yang Yang and Pinoy Sunday) wove a good-looking tapestry of gang motifs. The lead actors preen, puff their cigarettes, sport their pecs and make gangsterdom look an adorable lifestyle, until it turns, as film industry morality demands, nasty.