Kei (Simon Yam), Bo (Lam Ka Tung), Sak (Law Wing Cheong) and Mac (Kenneth Cheung) are a team of pickpockets in Hong Kong. They're not the kind of hardened squinting criminals one usually meets in the films I watch; they're rather modern and urban variations on the charming rogue archetype, getting by through dexterity and wit instead of violence.
If you ignore the bickering of people who spend way too much time with one another, the quartet leads a rather charmed life. Their carefreeness ends when a mysterious woman (Kelly Lin) "accidentally" encounters each of them, leaving the sort of impression one usually expresses through rather idiotic grinning.
Cynical people could think she is setting the gang up for some sort of trap. And she is, in a way, but not in the way you would expect.
To say more about the plot would be a cruel thing to do, so I'll just leave it at that.
Don't get me wrong: I may be very much in love with the films of Johnnie To, but I would never steep so low as to say he is unable to make a bad movie; perhaps even two. This is definitely not one of those, though. In fact, I'd call it one of To's best films, leading to the logical conclusion that Sparrow is one of the best films I know.
Sparrow is a comedy, at least if your definition of comedy does include films that are not made to make you laugh out loud, but rather to make you smile with joy, perhaps even a little glee; films that have a lightness in touch and outlook without ignoring the existence of darkness, instead letting the hoary old cliché about there being no light without darkness and so on and so on look downright deep.
Sparrow really does work some magic on the most cynical of hearts (mine) and it looks oh so very easy how it does this.
There's a sense of rhythm to every gliding movement of the camera and every step of the actors that - combined with the brilliant score by Fred Avril & Xavier Jamaux (who are also responsible for the soundtrack of To's Mad Detective) - nearly turns the film into a musical.
I expected Yam to suddenly break into song or slowly start to dance in more than one scene and could never shake the feeling that the film itself wanted to transform into a musical (or a bird) any minute now. A French musical to be more specific; a French musical made by a former Nouvelle Vague director to be even more specific. Or what the film calls a sparrow.
The acting is of course great. You should know most faces from many other of To's films, an ensemble of actors most directors should be jealous of.
Does the film have any flaws? I am honestly not sure. As an experience it left me kind of drunk, kind of exhilarated, both no states of mind useful for the search for errors, flaws, mistakes, pimples or rashes.
And you know what? I don't know many better things to say about a work of art than "I don't care if it has flaws.". It's a little like with people you love.
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