Remember Al Pacino’s over-the-top histrionics in Coppola’s equally over-the-top Godfather: Part III? Remember how he bellowed “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in?” Well, that’s the plot of Johnnie To’s Triad Election, and a venerable one it is, too. It’s served not only gangster flicks, but cop movies as well. Danny Glover or Gene Hackman or Morgan Freeman want out, they just want to retire and go to a well-earned rest, but they assign him one more case, and the results aren’t good . . .

In Triad Election, the man who wants out is Jimmy Lee (Louis Koo): he wants to go legit. He wants to move out of the shadowy world of pirate DVD porn and into legitimate business with mainland China. He’s the god-son of Triad boss Lam Lok (Simon Lam), whose two year term as chairman of the Wo Sing Triad is just about up. That’s the election of the title: the polling of the “uncles,” the under-bosses, to find Lok’s successor.

The film’s prologue alerts us to a major theme. We hear, in voice over, the history of the Triads in Hong Kong, how they came to the city to find a better life. How they solve internal problems without recourse to the authorities. We see the baroque initiation rites of the clans, how they bind their members to the group. Most of all, we feel the weight of tradition, a tradition that will be sorely tried in the course of the film.

As the film opens, Jimmy is showing off his development plans to investors. His is wife by his side; Hong Kong is in the background; various officials surround him. We see his dreams in a painting: a prosperous development in the surrounding, empty fields. Mr Kwok agrees to invest; Jimmy promises a pay-off to a chief official.

Cut to a meeting of Godfather Lok and his five god-sons. It’s his birthday, and they are gathered for dinner, when discussion inevitably turns to the upcoming election. Lok asks them if they plan to run for chairman; Kun (Ka Tung Lam) says yes, Jimmy says no, that he’s going into business, that he wants out. Behind Lok’s beneficent smile, the wheels are turning, and it’s clear something is up.

It’s not long before we find out what it is: going against all tradition, Lok plans to run for a second two-year term. In this, he’s entirely at odds with the rest of the clan, but he’s confident that without Jimmy running, he will win in the end. What he doesn’t know is that Jimmy has been blackmailed into doing exactly that: standing for election to Chairman of the Wo Sing clan. Thus is set up a classic confrontation between mentor and pupil, establishment and upstart, father and son.

It’s a theme that echoes throughout the movie, in Lok’s relationships with his gangster god-sons, and in his bond with his own biological son. The god-sons are a mixed bag: Kun is a vicious climber, ready to stab dear old god-dad in the back at the first opportunity; Jet (Nick Cheung) is a loyalist, and will do Lok’s bidding, even to a fault; and Big Head (Lam Suet) is a clown, not taken seriously by the others. All are vying for the god-father’s attention in their own way.

Lok’s own son is another problem . . . he’s trying to get started in the gangs at his school, and dad doesn’t like it. “My son’s going to be a doctor or a lawyer,” he says, even as the boy is clearly taking after the old man. He’s the mirror image of Jimmy, who wants out of the gangster life.

On one level, Triad Election is a meditation on family, particularly the father-son relationship. On another level, it’s a tremendously entertaining gangster film, one that draws heavily on American examples of the genre. Director To is especially good at choreographing sudden, unexpected violence. His set pieces are organic, and seem to flow naturally out of the rest of the plot. He builds suspense expertly — in one scene, Jimmy and his wife eat in a restaurant while a car circles the block, just that, over and over, until the tension becomes unbearable. Will he see it in time, and get himself and his wife out of harm’s way?

To and his cinematographer Cheng Siu Keung create a dark, half-lit Triad world . . . Jimmy is often dimly lit, in the shadows, a portent, perhaps, of his deepening criminal involvement. In the nightclub scenes, there is a perpetual twilight, as (literally) shady business is taken care of. When Jimmy is in jail on the mainland, the cell is lit in pools of light in the darkness. When Jimmy is released, he emerges from the darkness of the cell and into the light of day.

Louis Koo as Jimmy is competent, although a bit wooden, and Nick Cheung as Jet is fine, but it’s the performance of Simon Lam as Lok that stands out. His look of calm beneficence masks a calculating mind that is always figuring the angles. He is chilling as he calmly plots Jimmy’s demise, and methodically eliminates anyone who opposes his second term as Chairman.

LIke all Hong Kong films of the last decade, Triad Election was made in the context of the 1997 transfer of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule. With it came massive change, the ramifications of which are still becoming known. As Hong Kong changes, the Triads can hardly hope to be unaffected. In the end, the most fundamental changes to the gangster tradition are brought about not by Lok’s plot to succeed himself as boss, but by the Chinese authorities, who force Jimmy to become permanent Chairman of the Wo Sing Triad. All the better, of course, to control crime in it’s newly-acquired territory.

Unlike Michael Corleone, it’s not the mob pulling Jimmy Lee back in, but the government itself. And so the final image in the film — Hong Kong’s new boss China in the background, controlling everything, even the feared Triads, like a shadowy puppeteer.