The Running Out of Time (Johnnie To, 1999, 2001) films, as well as other Hong Kong dystopic films such as Hard-Boiled (John Woo, 1992), share with the nowiconic American television series 24 (2001–10, summer 2014) a preoccupation with the concentration and limitation of time and motion. The Hong Kong films to be considered here express the well-known anxiety about the 1997 handover through strategies of suspense relying on limitation of time, a familiar technique transferred into an innovative setting as the lead character in each Running Out of Time film engages in a parodic mirroring of the ‘get rich’ activity so basic to the experience of Hong Kong. The parody is not only societal but cinematic, as the noir icon D.O.A. (Rudolph Maté, 1950), among other noir films such as White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949), The Big Clock (John Farrow, 1948) and Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger, 1950), serves as subtext for a ‘running out of time’ anti-hero.

While the pre-1997 apocalyptic film Hard-Boiled differs from Running Out of Time in its presentation, it nevertheless posits a familiar but hypertensive cliff-hanger scenario (a hospital held hostage, with patients and staff, by a ruthless, even deranged, gang) as a metaphor for a society losing its underpinnings. Here these texts and others intersect with the phenomenally successful American TV series 24, which has employed a highly innovative and demanding ‘real-time’ strategy to play out (some would say to engender) Americans’ fears of terrorist activity following 11 September 2001. The mechanics of the series rely on repeated ‘cliff-hanger’ situations which are significantly intensified by the 24-hour structure of the show (one hour-long episode = one hour of ‘real time’), which does not permit time lapses not covered in the narrative, or other ellipses, and are complicated further by the introduction of parallel and intersecting subplots and incidents. Notably influenced by Hong Kong ‘action’ technique and by melodramatic practice, the series nonetheless evolves an original narrative, within an American context (often mirroring current topics in American political discourse in its plots), which expresses concerns parallel to those of certain Hong Kong films since the 1980s.