Hong Kong action-crime films are so extensively studied that there may seem little new to say on the topic. Over the years countless scholars, critics, journalists and fans have dissected the genre's chief talents, stylistic attributes and industrial practices. Yet, that discussion invariably focuses on films from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, a period when a particularly spectacular form of Hong Kong action-crime captured global attention. The more remote that era becomes from the present, the more obvious is the question of that topic's limited historical span and generic specificity. Hong Kong had had a diverse and prolific cinema for decades before that cycle, rife with varied genres and shaped by local conditions still not widely known to global scholarship, so how pertinent is the well-trodden subject of action-crime to this rich but still little-known early history?

Into this imposing but intriguing field wades Kristof Van den Troost, with his book Hong Kong Crime Films: Criminal Realism, Censorship and Society, 1947–1986. Despite the extensive writing on action-crime, Van den Troost points out, crime films are rarely addressed as a genre independent of action. Previous emphases on action, he claims, misunderstand the narrative significance of crime, independent of action, and already evident in Hong Kong's social realist films that were common in the 1950s. This organizing attribute of “criminal realism,” as Van den Troost calls it, mirrored contemporary sociopolitical issues and was reinforced by censorship practices that at times both inspired and undermined creative impulses. Long obscured by the spectacular nature of Hong Kong's action-crime films from the mid-1980s and early 1990s, it is censorship and the longer history of criminal realism, Van den Troost demonstrates, that defines Hong Kong cinema and the culture and community that made and watched it.

In its detailed history of local film censorship, Van den Troost's book makes a major contribution to Hong Kong film history and studies of cinema censorship more broadly. Prior to this book, little had been published about film censorship in Hong Kong. Conventional wisdom regarding Hong Kong film history long held that in the fast-paced, freewheeling capitalism of the 1970s–1980s, censorship was rarely imposed by a government committed to laissez-faire capitalism and unlikely to intervene in a prolific and seemingly low-stakes economic sector that provided jobs, captivated local audiences and helped grow the colony's visibility abroad. Yet in excavating such subjects as the Theatres Regulation Ordinance of 1908 and the Panel of Censors established in 1947, Van den Troost presents a far-reaching and materially informed history, drawing on both British colonial records and Chinese-language news reports. Building on and extending the similarly important work of Herman Yau, Van den Troost references figures such as Nigel Watt, a career colonial official with prior experience in Africa and Aden, whose effort to improve transparency in Hong Kong film censorship was calculated to entrench its legitimacy.

Another achievement of Hong Kong Crime Films that will be obvious to any reader is the sheer depth and expert knowledge of the cinema that Van den Troost demonstrates. The author moves easily between English- and Chinese-language scholarship and criticism, and he discusses dozens of films from the 1950s–1970s that are little known among existing English-language scholarship. The volume is also beautifully illustrated with nearly two dozen excellent frame grabs, archival images, and reproductions of posters and contemporary ephemera, which all give a commendably immersive account of Hong Kong film history. Scholars and film buffs already well-versed in Hong Kong film will find their knowledge challenged and refined by Hong Kong Crime Films. Readers new to Hong Kong film will get an excellent education in the cinema's preeminent themes.

If any complaint can be made about such a comprehensive and compelling book, it might be that its detailed account of bureaucratic-industrial negotiations can sometimes obscure the demotic voice of audiences and their knowledge or perspective on the films themselves. In any media ecosystem questions of reception and the degree to which audiences know, care or understand the behind-the-scenes processes shaping their entertainment consumption is just as relevant as the policies and final product themselves. In a colonial context such as the films from 1947–1986 on which Van den Troost focuses, it could be especially powerful to counter the intriguing selections from colonial records not only with the films but with more voices of the filmmakers and filmgoers themselves. Such a counter-history would be meaningful both as a more nuanced narrative of colonial film culture, but as a prehistory to Hong Kong's current era of mainland Chinese media control. As Van den Troost often notes in his judicious comments comparing his film history with current Hong Kong cinema, “‘everyday resistance’ is sadly very relevant again in Hong Kong today” (p. 191).

Censorship, as Ven den Troost notes, has sadly only grown more relevant in understanding contemporary Hong Kong film. In using one of the cinema's most familiar topics to unearth a much longer history of censorship than normally recognized, Hong Kong Crime Films is a richly textured, deeply rewarding contribution to Hong Kong film studies and to histories of censorship in world film.