Rebels of the neon god

Powerful portrait of a confused friendship; two youthsfind each other in a combination of hero worship and aggressi¡on. Hsiao Kang stays away from an entrance exam. Instead, he aimlessly wanders the streets of Taipei and bumps into Ah Tze, a juvenile delinquent who spends his days playing video games and racing through the streets on his motorbike. He always has a chain with him which he uses at once if any one irritates him. Hsiao Kang still remembers all too well that Ah Tze dama¡ged his father’s taxi not too long ago. He follows Ah Tze and, when he disappears into a hotel with a girl, Hsiao wrecks Ah Tze’s beloved motorbike.In the end Ah Tze realises that his life is going the wrong way: his best friend has been beaten up by a bunch of gangsters and he finds he has fallen in love with his brother’s girlfriend. Hsiao Kang in turn is thrown out of the house by his father because he did not attend his exam.Rebels of the Neon God has a very homo-erotic undertone and is made with a feeling for humour and irony. Thanks to the graceful camera work, the grey city of Taipei becomes a beautiful city and the moody and mysterious guitar music intensifies the dramatic effect of the film.’Of all the hundreds of movies that have tried to get inside the unguided-missile minds of lonely young men in crumbling inner cities, Rebels of the Neon God strikes me as the truest and most tender’, according to Tony Rayns in the catalogue of the Vancouver Film Festival.