Like many of Edward Yang’s films, The Terrorizers examines Taiwan’s urbanized society, but this time, it’s centered around the rougher side of town, where a shooting incident connects the lives of three couples. At first, the scenes don’t make much sense, as the film rapidly shifts from couple to couple without explanation, and the sequence being used to place doubt on the reality of certain scenes. But as the film progresses, these scenes form into something like a puzzle, a piece of a whole treatise on the way real and unreal intersect, the way these perceptions shape one’s relationships. The Terrorizers is somber, and baffling, and sometimes downright bleak, but it’s a fascinating enigma on today’s urban loneliness.
An uncompromising look into urban life from the eyes of a voyeuristic photographer, a rebellious teenager, and a married couple teetering on the edge of adultery.
Three couples– an amateur photographer and his girlfriend, a depressed novelist and her hospital professional husband, and an injured teeanger and her criminal boyfriend– find their lives intertwined during a shooting incident in Taipei.
The story structure might confuse some viewers, but it’s the reason the mystery is much more potent.
Pure cinema.
