Film Forum

Taiwan, 1986
Directed by Edward Yang
Written by Hsiao Yeh, Edward Yang
Starring Cora Miao, Lee Li-chun
Approx. 110 min. DCP Courtesy Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute.

“Made hot on the heels of Yang’s TAIPEI STORY (1985), in a rare period of productivity, THE TERRORIZERS is an enigmatic, upsetting movie—troubling in ways you may have difficulty putting your finger on, nagging at you days later, like a sore spot that’s hard to reach. Its ensemble of disparate characters is united by their shared enervation, as though from a lingering sickness, and a vague ambiance of crisis hangs over the film from the earliest scenes: an anonymous body lying face-down in the street; the police shooting a gambling den to pieces in brisk, businesslike fashion. The editing is curt, elliptical, and at times Bressonian, while the camera generally keeps at a laconic distance, and along with embellishments like a sudden cut from an interior scene to a window washer clinging to the outside of the building or the recurring image of a huge, spherical water tank that seems to belong on a Martian colony, this all combines to keep a viewer ever-so-slightly on-edge. A manga fan and practiced cartoonist, Yang has an eye for framings that throb with implacable loss, and he lingers on scenes of departure, on footsteps sounding in a hospital corridor, or a woman’s view from her apartment window as her lover walks away after a violent quarrel scored to the conclusion of The Platters’ “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” a gorgeous scene in a movie full of them.” – Nick Pinkerton, Artforum

Reviews

“The bombs that we plant in each other are ticking away.”
– Edward Yang

“Yang keeps all of the balls in the air, resisting definitive answers and conjuring a
lean-in sense of intimate dread.”
– Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice