NYAFF 2026: NIGHT KING

The 25th annual New York Asian Film Festival takes place from July 10th to July 26th. For details and showtimes, click here.

Anyone who is already familiar with my writing the irony of me saying this, but there really is something to be said for brevity.

To wit: The director’s cut of Night King is good, quite entertaining movie… but I can’t help wondering how much more enthusiastic I would be if I hadn’t been in 45 minutes into my viewing and realized there was still nearly another hour left. As much fun as there is to be had for the first couple hours, by the time we get to the tricky, caperesque antics of the third it became increasingly hard not to imagine a version of the movie that had gotten to this point sooner, and expanded on it. And equally hard not to feel like that version might be the superior one.

I mean… this is a director’s cut, so that version might very well exist. But… you dance with the one what brought you, cinematically speaking. So here we are.

The first 15 or so minutes of the film unfold in a blur of quirky characters and frantic activity as Foon (Dayo Wong) the manager of EJ’s Entertainment, a hostess club in the major Hong Kong tourist district of East Tsim Sha Tsui, stage managers what seems like a typically chaotic night. In this, we get a sense of the camaraderie and coordination that many, many years’ worth of these sorts of nights have engendered between Foon and his girls. It’s messy, but it works.

That is until the owner of the establishment dies and the business suddenly finds itself up for grabs. One Madame V (Sammi Cheng), an established name in the hostess club field, makes a play to add EJ’s Entertainment to her portfolio… a smart business move complicated by the fact that once upon a time, V and Foon were married and very much in love.

The financial wheelings and dealings that drive the plot are slightly beyond me… and also a little besides the point, which feels easy enough to grasp: Madame V gives Foon 30 days to become big earners or he and his girls will all be replaced.

All this could very easily power the plot of an entire film all on its own, but it’s really just the first act. The second act brings Foon and V into an uneasy partnership as they both find themselves scrambling to make enough to keep the EJ’s out of the clutches of Prince Fung (Lo Chun Yip, eminemtly punchworthy), a smug, petty trust fund tech capitalist who targets them partly out of greed and partly because V slighted him during their first meeting. The third act begings when they realize the fux has been in the whole time and their only hope is an elaborate Hail Mary plan to get out from under their enemies once and for all… not realizing that some of those enemies may or may not be from within their own ranks.

The plot stuff is, quite frankly, the least engaging aspect of the entire film. Granted, those machinations do make for a fairly involving third act… but overall, the film is at its best when it is just having fun with its characters. It would be inaccurate to say that anyone here is particularly fleshed out but it is a cast flush with charisma, even if they’re only given a single note or at most two notes to play. Everyone hits their marks with great skill and screen presence to spare.

Dayo Wong and Sammy Chen are old hands at this sort of thing, their legacies speak for themselves. I would be remiss, though, if I didn’t give a special shout out to the support they got from players like Yeung Wai Lun as Turf, Foons’ most loyal consigliere, who gets his fair share of laugh lines; Fish Liew, always welcome, shines as Foons’ current girlfriend, bristling at the increasing closeness of the former lovers. And last (but nowhere near least) Tang Lai Lin, who I found to be a bit of a scene stealer as Yui, an employee who everyone considers two plain to be a hostess but whose skills with language come in handy more than once. She doesn’t actually do all that much but her constant, colorful background presence makes the movie feel warm and lived in helping to paper over how occasionally protracted the movie can feel.

In the end Night King makes for an interesting case; it is, is in my opinion, overly long for what it’s trying to do. It’s a good film with the distinct possibility that a very good one might be hiding within some judicious cuts. But would a more streamlined, plot focused version truly be the best version? Or would the process of cutting down mean getting rid of all the small lovely moments that breathe life into the story?

I have no idea. But for what it’s worth to the filmmakers, I don’t think I would even remotely mind finding out.