iGirl (iGirl •梦情人)

For F*** Magazine

iGirl (iGirl •梦情人)

Director : Kam Ka-wai

Cast : Ekin Cheng, Chrissie Chau, Dominic Ho, Connie Man, Lam Chi-Chung, Joyce Cheng

Genre : Comedy/Romance

Run Time : 95 mins

Opens : 17 March 2016

Rating : PG13 (Some Sexual References)

           “Do not go online shopping while drunk” – wiser words have rarely been spoken. In this sci-fi comedy, Evan (Ekin Cheng) drowns his sorrows with his friends Johnny (Ho) and Irwin (Lam), after the three are dumped by their respective girlfriends. Evan stumbles home and goes online, ordering an “iGirl” on a whim. Two days later, a gynoid programmed with his specific preferences arrives at his doorstep. This is model #2017001 (Chau), or 001 for short. On meeting their friend’s new robot beau, Johnny and Irwin immediately want an iGirl of their own. 002 (Man) is delivered to Johnny, with Irwin getting 003 (Joyce Cheng). As the men help their newfound loves adjust to life as human beings, their ex-girlfriends get wind of the new A.I. ladies in their exes' lives and plot their revenge.

            A movie about a man striking up a relationship with an artificially created woman might be a novel premise to Hong Kong filmgoers, but it’s far from a new idea and we’ve already seen films like Mannequin, Weird Science, Lars and the Real Girl, and recently Her and Ex Machina, to name a few. It’s very safe to say that iGirl is far, far worse than all of the above-mentioned films. The movie’s conceptions of gender roles are distasteful and embarrassingly retrograde. Instead of satirising and cleverly commenting on the objectification of women, iGirl instead reinforces that notion. All of the women in the film are either compliant robots programmed to satisfy every whim of their male “masters”, or conniving, manipulative and intensely jealous gold-diggers. It’s a wish fulfilment fantasy that is frankly repulsive, and it’s quite staggering to see something like this in 2016.

            There is no internal logic to any of the sci-fi elements. With a film that apparently takes place in the present day, it’s natural to expect a pretty good explanation for how such cutting-edge advances in artificial intelligence technology have been made readily available and affordable. No such luck. Believably portraying a robot is a bigger acting challenge than one might think, and none of the three actresses make choices deliberate or distinct enough such that they are convincing as gynoids. The film focuses on three men and their relationships with their respective robot girlfriends; we get a montage showing how they’re progressing and it just so happens that each couple hits exactly the same points in their journey as the other two. The visual effects work is largely cartoony and there’s an inexplicable fight scene towards the film’s conclusion that’s just a mess.

            Ekin Cheng, a heartthrob back in the 90s, seems to be a little past the age to be playing this character, who is written like he should be in his late 20s or early 30s as opposed to Cheng’s 48. There are some reasonably sweet moments that he shares with leading lady Chau, but these are few and far between. The characterisation of Evan’s friends does not go past “Johnny is the vain one and Irwin’s the fat one”. The inventor of the iGirl, ludicrously named “Dr. Intelligence”, is bland instead of enigmatic.

            iGirl is the directorial debut of Kam Ka-wai, but is co-produced by Wong Jing, basically Hong Kong’s equivalent of Michael Bay. In China, iGirl is being released exclusively via the online video service iQiyi, targeting “young netizens”. It seems Wong has severely underestimated the intelligence of said “young netizens". The possibilities of a relationship between man and shapely machine have proven to be worthwhile fuel for the imaginations of many filmmakers, dating as far back as Fritz Lang, whose expressionist sci-fi Metropolis was released in 1927. Even earlier, there was the Pygmalion myth. That iGirl fails to do anything interesting with inherently meaty subject matter is disappointing.

Summary: A shallow, misogynistic comedy that fails to add anything remotely meaningful to the canon of films about humankind’s relationship with artificial intelligence.

RATING: 1.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

SPL 2: A Time For Consequences (杀破狼II)

For F*** Magazine

SPL 2: A TIME FOR CONSEQUENCES (杀破狼II)

Director : Soi Cheang

Cast : Tony Jaa, Louis Koo, Wu Jing, Simon Yam, Zhang Jin, Philip Keung, Ken Lo

Genre : Action/Thriller

Run Time : 120 mins

Opens : 2 July 2015

Rating : NC-16 (Violence and Drug Use)

Tony Jaa has no more time for elephants, only a time for consequences in this Hong Kong-Thai action thriller. Jaa plays Chai, a prison guard whose young daughter Sa is battling leukaemia. An unlikely new prisoner lands in the jail where Chai works: Hong Kong undercover cop Kit (Wu), who has had his cover blown while on the trail of organ trafficking ring kingpin Mr. Hung (Koo). Mr. Hung, himself terminally ill, is in Thailand for a heart transplant to save his life, forcing his younger brother (Jun Kung) to be the donor. Kit’s supervisor and uncle Wah (Yam) tracks his nephew down and travels to Thailand to retrieve him. It turns out that Kit is the only bone marrow match for Sa, so Kit and Chai must become unlikely partners to save their own lives and the life of little Sa as fists and bullets fly.

            SPL 2 is rather confusingly named – it is almost completely unrelated to the 2005 film SPL, starring Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung, even though both Simon Yam and Wu Jing were in the earlier movie too. This is a “spiritual sequel”, i.e. some other script with the “SPL” name slapped onto it. The film’s grammatically-impaired English tagline is “Real action. Real fight.” There are fights aplenty and action director Li Chung Chi choreographs some intense battles, including a shootout at a ferry terminal and a stylish climactic showdown in a pristine high-end medical facility. It is also a boon that Tony Jaa, Wu Jing and Zhang Jin are all highly skilled martial artists in their own right and are able to perform their own fights. Those looking purely for “real fight”, however, will probably come away slightly disappointed at the usage of stylised wirework for several of the sequences.

            While it contains enough fisticuffs to satiate action junkies, SPL 2 is burdened with an unexpectedly convoluted, labyrinth story. A key plot device is that of a terminally ill little girl and the search for a bone marrow donor – this seems more at home in a soap opera than in a martial arts flick. The plot has to straddle both Hong Kong and Thailand and this is often done quite clumsily. It seems as if screenwriter Jill Leung Lai-yin was tasked with finding a way to work Jaa into the story and ended up spinning a far knottier yarn that was needed. This is a film in which the two protagonists do not speak the same language, and have to communicate via smart phone translator app. If that doesn’t drive a wedge in the buddy chemistry, we have no idea what will.

            Tony Jaa is very likeable as an action hero and is experiencing something of a career resurgence after completing his stint as a Buddhist monk, making inroads into Hollywood with Fast and Furious 7 and the Dolph Lundgren-starrer Skin Trade. He has the earnestness and intensity down pat but of course, it’s his impressive Muay Thai-trained athleticism that makes more of an impact than anything else. Wu Jing comes from a different martial arts training background and they do complement each other, even though their partnership never feels complete because of the invisible cultural/language barrier that’s always there. Rocking a waistcoat, Zhang Jin is slick and dangerous as the prison warden and main henchman to Mr. Hung. Louis Koo puts aside his usual handsome, healthy appearance as the sickly master criminal; his portrayal sinister but never wholly threatening.

            Instead of having a little fun and being truly inventive with the action sequences, SPL 2 takes itself far too seriously – the faux-portentous subtitle “A Time for Consequences” should have been indication enough. Instead of being gritty and hard-hitting, the film is often frustratingly maudlin, melodramatic and hard to follow. The cliché use of very recognisable pieces of classical music in an attempt to elicit pathos, including Mozart’s Requiem and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Summer), further mires the film in unintentional hilarity. The filmmakers clearly had access to the resources and talent to make a truly entertaining, breath-taking martial arts extravaganza, but have instead tangled themselves up in too much plot.

Summary: Even though it contains a fair amount of neatly-choreographed action, SPL 2 is slow, difficult to follow and fails to deliver a cohesive team-up between Thai action star Tony Jaa and Hong Kong action star Wu Jing.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Helios (赤道)

For F*** Magazine

HELIOS (赤道)

Director : Longman Leung, Sunny Lok

Cast : Jacky Cheung, Nick Cheung, Shawn Yue, Janice Man, Ji Jin-Hee, Choi Siwon, Wang Xueqi, Chang Chen

Genre : Action/Thriller

Run Time : 120 mins

Opens : 30 April 2015

Rating : NC-16

The best and brightest counter-terror experts from Hong Kong and South Korea have to join forces in order to foil a nuclear catastrophe in this action thriller. Wanted terrorist Helios (Chang) has stolen the compact nuclear device “Davy Crockett 8” and 16 uranium spheres from a facility in South Korea. The authorities believe Helios’ right-hand woman “the Messenger” (Man) is responsible for downing an airliner in Liaoning. Chinese envoy Song An (Wang), Inspector Lee Yin-ming (Nick Cheung) of the Hong Kong Counter-Terror Response Unit, South Korean weapons expert Choi Min Ho (Ji) and NIS agent Park Woo Chul (Choi) converge in Hong Kong to recover the weapon. Physics professor Siu Chi-yan (Jacky Cheung) joins the team as a consultant. As they race against the clock to prevent a sale of the DC-8 device from going down, a far-reaching conspiracy begins to unravel.

            Helios is written and directed by Longman Leung and Sunny Luk, the pair behind 2012’s crime thriller Cold War. Things look promising enough: it’s handsomely shot, the production values are solid, the action sequences pack a punch, the visual effects are better than most Hong Kong productions – but it’s not long before Helios falls apart. The film’s style comes off as very self-conscious, but the harder Leung and Luk try to get the audiences to take the film seriously, the more unintentionally funny it becomes. Just like gritting one’s teeth too hard can make one look silly, Helios often ends up embarrassing itself in its attempts at being tough and cool. The writing-directing duo also try to make the plot too convoluted for its own good; running in circles with what should be a straightforward thriller storyline, the film coming off as generic in spite of itself as a result.

            With its attempt to insert geopolitics and ideology clashes into a “stop the nuke from going off” story, Helios often feels like a below-average season of 24, with Nick Cheung in place of Kiefer Sutherland. Nick Cheung’s character is so hard-core, he waterboards a suspect with their shirt – this is silly rather than threatening. Jacky Cheung plays the stereotypical professor, complete with beard, glasses, bow tie and sweater vests. 

Chang Chen is not quite scary enough as the titular big bad, but model/actress Janice Man is surprisingly convincing as an ice-cold assassin. Ji Jin-Hee as a nuclear physicist – at least it’s more believable than Denise Richards in The World is Not Enough. Choi Siwon’s legions of fans will probably be thrilled to see him toting a shotgun and kicking ass as the agent in charge of protecting Ji’s character.

            Helios wants to be smarter than your average shoot ‘em up flick but it falls on its face one too many times. One of the elements that really took this reviewer out of the whole thing is the magic translator earpieces that allow the characters from Hong Kong and Korea to communicate seamlessly. This device, reminiscent of the Babel fish from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, instantly kills any realism or grit the movie is aiming for. One can’t help but wonder what the consequences of a mistranslation resulting from a glitch in the software at such a high level would be. Peter Kam’s musical score is also incredibly unsubtle, blaring and almost pouncing at the audience. It’s meant to create tension, but is so obtrusive it detracts from the atmosphere. The final nail in the coffin is the movie’s ending: there’s a huge plot twist really late in the game, only for the movie to end on an infuriating and frankly quite shameless sequel bait note. By the time said sequel rolls around, we probably would have all but forgotten this one.

Summary: Solid production values and a watchable cast can’t salvage this generic, sometimes unintentionally funny thriller that thinks it’s a lot smarter than it actually is.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

            

From Vegas to Macau II (赌城风云II)

For F*** Magazine

FROM VEGAS TO MACAU II (赌城风云II)

Director : Wong Jing
Cast : Chow Yun Fat, Carina Lau, Nick Cheung, Shawn Yue, Kimmy Tong, David Chiang, Angela, Jin Qiaoqiao, Yuan Qiao
Genre : Action/Comedy
Run Time : 110 mins
Opens : 19 February 2015
Rating : PG13 (Some Violence)

This Chinese New Year, the God of Gamblers has returned to grace us mere mortals with his presence in this follow-up to last year’s From Vegas to Macau. Just when he thought he was home free, Master Ken (Chow) continues to be the victim of criminal syndicate D.O.A.’s dogged pursuit. Master Ken’s estranged son Cool (Yue) is on the case, tracking down D.O.A. accountaint Mark (Cheung). It turns out that Mark was an old associate of Ken’s, Ken travelling to Bangkok to rescue Mark and Mark’s young daughter from the clutches of his evil employers. In the meantime, Ken attempts to rekindle his romance with former flame Molly (Lau), the love of his life who has eluded him for years.

            As a Chinese New Year action comedy, a large amount of light silliness is to be expected from From Vegas To Macau II. The film packs in wanton amounts of slapstick tomfoolery – thankfully, Chapman To’s grating comic relief sidekick does not return from the earlier film. That said, director Wong Jing still finds new, stupefying ways to lower the bar. Master Ken has a robot butler who provides stock “malfunctioning A.I.” hijinks, there is a Muay Thai boxing sequence in which Chow Yun Fat does pencil rolls on the boxing ring floor, an attempt at repelling deadly crocodiles by blowing bubbles underwater…we’re barely scratching the surface of the profound idiocy here. Let it not be said that Chow Yun Fat only gets humiliated in Hollywood films like Dragonball Evolution, because this is more embarrassment than he’s ever had to endure in a film. One can only imagine how anyone whose mental image of the superstar is as the suave charmer from The Man in the Net or the badass cop from Hard Boiled will be able to accept Chow subjecting himself to the myriad indignities in From Vegas to Macau II.

            This reviewer has a relatively high threshold for action comedy hijinks – after all, he was one of very few critics to give the recent Mortdecai a positive notice. The gags in Mortdecai were juvenile, but there was an inner consistency to it. Here, Wong Jing takes an “anything goes” approach. Perhaps it is too much to ask for some method to this mo lei tau (nonsense talk) madness. The tonal shifts are jarring to say the least – there are goofy comedy sound effects within minutes of a brutal paramilitary assault on an Interpol safe house involving several head shots. Audiences are apparently meant to be moved by tender scenes between Mark and his young daughter, with maudlin piano and strings playing in the background. The film’s climactic scene is shockingly tragic and melodramatic, set to a weepy torch song, leading into the end credits. Then, there’s a mid-credits scene featuring a goofy surprise star cameo.

            Carina Lau, who starred alongside Chow Yun Fat in Let the Bullets Fly and Tragic Hero, plays the “one true love” of Master Ken’s life. Compared to all the other nonsense in the movie, it’s relatively convincing that these two characters shared a past. Naturally, the chemistry Chow and Lau share is undermined by a plot twist later on. Nick Cheung is decent sidekick material but he is subjected to nearly as much humiliation as Chow is. Shawn Yue replaces Nicholas Tse from the previous film, who was unable to return because of scheduling conflicts. It’s a non-descript cop role, there’s supposed to be some kind of deep rift between Ken and Cool, but that’s forgotten quickly enough.

            Wong Jing further cements his reputation as China’s answer to Michael Bay by packing From Vegas to Macau II with big explosions and leery scenes of scantily-clad women. As if the film itself wasn’t already obnoxious, the director appears in a cameo early on, during a game of strip mahjong. And yet again, we see nothing of Las Vegas itself in a film titled From Vegas to Macau II. We’re thinking “From Bangkok to Macau” might’ve worked a fair bit better.

Summary: Audiences will likely eat up this flailing, tone-deaf, madcap comedy, reminding us that there’s no accounting for taste when it comes to Chinese New Year cash-grab releases.

RATING: 1.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

The Monkey King

For F*** Magazine

The Monkey King (西游記之大鬧天宮)

Director: Soi Cheang Pou-soi
Cast: Donnie Yen, Chow Yun-Fat, Aaron Kwok, Joe Chen, Peter Ho, Kelly Chen, Zhang Zilin, Gigi Leung, Xia Zitong
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Run Time: 120 mins
Opens: 6 February 2014
Rating: PG

It’s the Year of the Horse, but Sun Wukong will have none of it, barging into theatres two years before the Year of the Monkey. The classical 16th Century novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en has inspired countless works across various forms of media, its opening chapters forming the basis for this origin story film. Starring Donnie Yen in the title role, this take on The Monkey King has been in the works for four years, with its release date postponed several times. Perhaps it should have never been released.






A catastrophic battle in the heavens is waged between the forces of the Bull Demon King (Kwok) and the Jade Emperor (Chow). In the aftermath of the fighting, the goddess Nüwa patches up the swathes of the sky that have been torn apart, resulting in the formation of a crystal egg on Flower Fruit Mountain. A magical monkey (Yen) hatches from the egg, more inquisitive, bolder and mischievous than his fellow monkeys who call the Mountain home. He forms a friendship/kinda-romance with a fox vixen (Xia) and trains under Master Puti (Hai Yitian), who christens the monkey “Sun Wukong”. The Bull Demon King has his sights set on Wukong as the key to taking over the Jade Emperor’s realm; Wukong going about wreaking havoc in the heavens.



There’s no questioning the cultural and historical importance of Journey to the West, a novel that definitely deserves as epic a cinematic treatment as can be given. The only thing “epic” about The Monkey King is the sheer levels of fail. Trying to take in the mind-boggling mess that is this film, one can only imagine the chaos that must have gone on behind the scenes, that in the span of four years, this sorry slop is the best director Cheang Pou-soi and his crew could come up with. The cluttered screenplay by Szeto Kam Yuen and Edmond Wong heaves with exposition and pointless dialogue, robbing the film of the spirit of grand adventure that is a signature element of Journey to the West.



Chief of the cinematic crimes committed by The Monkey King is just how ghastly it all looks. One of the most important tasks every fantasy film has to accomplish is that of inviting its audience to partake in its world; to woo the viewer with breath-taking scenery and convince them of the reality of a fabricated, cinematic world. The Monkey King does none of this, looking staggeringly, ridiculously phony at every turn. Given the many mythical creatures in the story and its settings of heaven, hell, the paradise of Flower Fruit Mountain and the undersea domain of the Dragon King of the East Sea, The Monkey King is heavily reliant on green screen work. This reviewer didn’t buy the digitally-created backgrounds for a half second.


Veteran Hollywood visual effects supervisors Kevin Rafferty and David Ebner were in charge of the CGI work on this film, Rafferty’s credits including The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Casper, Deep Impact and The Perfect Storm and Ebner’s including Spider-Man 3, Underworld: Evolution and Sin City. What exactly happened here?! Most of the effects work looks jarringly half-rendered, textureless and incomplete and the creature designs, looking like they belong at a school play instead of a major motion picture, are laughable. The 3D effects are noticeable – by that, we mean they are constantly hammered into your eyes. The intention is for this…thing to be presented in IMAX 3D, a format which would surely make the myriad flaws in the execution of the film’s effects work all the more painfully obvious.

Caked in prosthetic makeup, zipped into an unintentionally hilarious orange fur suit and looking a whole lot like Jim Carrey’s Grinch, Donnie Yen takes on the legendary role of the simian troublemaker, in addition to choreographing the film’s action. Yen’s physicality is admirable, but it’s clearly hampered by the costume and the armour on top of that, and his impression of a monkey mostly involves blinking really fast. Yes, Sun Wukong is meant to be an unapologetic trickster who gets in everybody’s business, but boy, he certainly makes for a supremely annoying protagonist. It’s not impossible to make Wukong sympathetic, seeing as he’s the kind of character that earns a free pass from the audience by dint of his antics just being that entertaining, but Yen is unable to do so. Worst of all, Yen is given barely one scene to strut his martial arts prowess, and that’s the thing he’s the best at.



The rest of the supporting cast stands around a whole lot, with nothing required from Chow Yun Fat except looking royal and respectable, which he does well enough given that it’s impossible to take anyone seriously up against that terrible CGI backdrop. Aaron Kwok’s take on the Bull Demon King is less “monstrous” and more “sexy”, so this is achieved by gluing horns to his forehead. Joe Chen’s Princess Iron Fan is reduced to “constantly nagging wife”. Kelly Chen, Zhang Zilin and Gigi Leung’s roles as Nüwa, Chang’e and Guan Yin respectively are but cameos. There is a mildly amusing mid-air chase sequence involving Calvin Cheng’s Nezha.

The name “Wukong” means “to be awakened to emptiness”. If only those responsible for The Monkey King had been awakened to the futility of this exercise. It’s inauspicious to break things during Chinese New Year. Well, this movie just broke Journey to the West.

Summary: Donnie Yen said of putting on the makeup and costume, "it's very painful." After sitting through this, we can totally relate.

RATING: 1 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

From Vegas to Macau

For F*** Magazine

Director: Wong Jing
Cast: Chow Yun Fat, Nicholas Tse, Chapman To, Jing Tian, Gao Hu, Annie Wu, Michael Wong, Max Zhang, Philip Ng, Meng Yao
Genre: Comedy, Action
Run Time: 94 mins
Opens: 30 January 2014
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language And Violence)

Chinese New Year has rolled around again, and “luck” and “prosperity” are the operating words, many taking the season to hit the tables. Writer-director Wong Jing re-teams with star Chow Yun Fat for From Vegas to Macau, a kinda-sorta fourth entry in the God of Gamblers film series. The title is a misnomer as there are no globe-trotting hijinks and none of the film is set in Vegas. It is mostly set in Macau so the title isn’t a total bamboozle. Still, our advice is to keep away from this gambling den and do something more worthwhile with your hongbao money.







Benz (Hui), his son Cool (Tse) and buffoonish nephew Karl (To) operate as self-proclaimed Robin Hoods of the Hong Kong underworld, tripping up and humiliating criminals. Benz receives a call from his old friend, master con artist and gifted gambler Master Ken (Chow), who has left behind his life of crime to become a security consultant for casinos in Vegas. Master Ken invites Benz, Cool and Karl to Macau, both Cool and Karl falling for his daughter Rainbow (Tong). In the meantime, Cool’s half-brother Lionel (Ng) and his police partner Luo Xin (Jing) are undercover, attempting to unravel a match-fixing conspiracy. The mastermind is Mr. Ko (Gao), the head of the D.O.A. foundation, which is really a front for a money-laundering syndicate. The police goes to Master Ken for help, and Mr. Ko puts out a hit on Ken, sending assassin Ghost Eyes (Zhang) after the gambler. Benz, Cool, Karl and Ken’s beloved daughter soon find themselves in danger too, Master Ken having to summon all his skills to defeat Mr. Ko.

“Now ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin'/Is knowin' what to throw away and knowin’ what to keep,” so sang Kenny Rogers. There’s a lot in From Vegas to Macau that should have been thrown away, and wasn’t. This is a crime caper forcefully injected with an overdose of mo lei tau (nonsense talk); the humour broad, aggressive and mostly painfully unfunny. It’s a loud, brash assault on the senses, from the unnecessary stylistic flourishes to the cartoon sound effects to the gross-out sight gags. The film wants us to care about a treacherous criminal scheme and root for the protagonists to put an end to it, but the gags and pratfalls are so boorishly unsophisticated that they completely undermine any drama or tension and render the stakes null.



The “it’s a comedy! It’s supposed to be goofy!” defence will eventually pop up, so allow us to say this: the tone that would work best given the premise is something along the lines of the Ocean’s Eleven reboot series: sharp, wry, occasionally quite silly but never insultingly so. Here, Chapman To makes so many references to his genitals we probably could draw them, but would rather not. The D.O.A. assembly, with its national stereotypes, recalls the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. organization from the old Bond flicks and the distasteful handling of female characters is even more misogynistic here than in those films. There’s a racist jibe and a fat joke literally within two seconds of each other – it’s more casually offensive than it is intentionally un-PC, but in some ways, that makes the tone of the jokes worse.

There are some ideas and sequences which manage to be mildly amusing or fairly thrilling. Philip Ng, a skilled martial artist, has a fight scene in the D.O.A. offices which ends with him bailing out by way of BASE jump. However, most of the stuff is derivative – the “bungee ballet” performed in the mansion hall by Kimmy Tong is lifted directly from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Said mansion is also bizarrely booby-trapped: motorised suits of armour function as a home security system and full-sized antique cannons magically pop out of the floor. It’s something you’d expect to find in a Scooby Doo cartoon. And yes, there are the showy displays of card-shuffling skill, where it’s constantly and painfully obvious that those are computer-generated clubs, spades, diamonds and hearts.



Chow Yun Fat is likeable, charismatic and charming rather than brooding and badass, and there’s nothing wrong with that. He’s forced to make a fool of himself, engaging in not one but two cringe worthy musical numbers, but the guy is cool no matter what and at least he looks like he’s having fun. His Master Ken character is given such ludicrous abilities that it seems more like sorcery than sleight of hand. He can perfectly duplicate the sound of gunfire with nothing but his voice and there’s a scene in which he magically extracts truth serum from a glass of wine, as if it was some kind of spell. Nicholas Tse is a serviceable straight man, mercifully spared from having to ham it up alongside his cast-mates.

Watch this movie and you’ll find that Chapman To’s Karl will become the annoying comic relief sidekick you think of whenever the phrase “annoying comic relief sidekick” is uttered. He provides little comedy and zero relief and his grating tomfoolery is so pervasive it gives Jar Jar Binks and Ruby Rhod a run for their money. Yes, we went there. Jing Tian has become a hot property in the Hong Kong and China film industry and while it looks like her character is a capable policewoman, it’s not long before she’s compromised by truth serum and ends up thoroughly embarrassing herself in front of Ken. Kimmy Tong’s turn as flighty heiress Rainbow is pretty inconsequential; she’s depicted being able to fend for herself but is promptly put in jeopardy during the climax. At least Max Zhang’s pretty cool as the deadly killer henchman.



Wong Jing has been very open about his contempt for critics, and the self-referential, self-aggrandizing “meta” jokes in From Vegas to Macau will not help his case. Apropos of nothing, Karl exclaims “I love Wong Jing!” and the director ends up being integral to pulling off the final gambit. For something clearly intended as a crowd-pleasing Chinese New Year blockbuster, this reviewer found From Vegas to Macau alienating and annoying, too aimlessly madcap to entertain. Stick around during the end credits for a stinger scene, featuring a cameo that…huh? How does that even work?!

Summary: For the love of the god of gamblers, please go blow on somebody else’s dice. From Vegas to Macau to the rubbish heap.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Police Story 2013 (警察故事2013)

For F*** Magazine

POLICE STORY 2013 (警察故事2013)

Director: Ding Sheng
Cast:         Jackie Chan, Liu Ye, Jing Tian, Huang Bo, Yu Rongguang, Zhang Lanxin, Wang Zhifei
Genre: Action, Crime
Run Time: 106 mins
Opens: 24 December 2013
Rating: PG13

Upon the release of last year’s CZ12, Jackie Chan was pretty sure that it would be his last big, action-centric role, but the actor was also adamant that he was far from retirement. He revisits the Police Story franchise in this film which, like New Police Story before it, is unrelated to the earlier entries in the series and promises to be tough and serious. But are “grim and gritty” and “Jackie Chan” really the best bedfellows?

Ditching the Chan Ka-Kui persona from the first four Police Story films and Chan Kwok-Wing from New Police Story, here, Jackie Chan plays Mainland Chinese police Captain Zhong Wen. He goes to meet his somewhat-estranged daughter Miao Miao (Jing Tian) at the Wu Bar, an industrial-chic establishment converted from a factory. Zhong discovers Miao Miao is dating the Wu Bar’s proprietor Wu Jiang (Liu Ye), something he disapproves of. It turns out that his suspicions of Wu Jiang are not unfounded as Zhong and the rest of the patrons get taken hostage inside the nightclub. Wu Jiang pursues a vendetta that began one night five years ago with an incident in a pharmacy, and it turns out that Zhong was there. Zhong has to fight for the safety of his daughter and everyone else held hostage as the police plans an infiltration of the Wu Bar to put an end to a night of madness.



Audiences will know they’re in for something different than the usual Jackie Chan action romp from the opening scene onwards – that scene featuring Jackie holding a gun to his head. In his review of Police Story 3: Super Cop, film critic James Berardinelli said of Jackie Chan’s style, “this is action with a smile, not a grimace.” Well, Police Story 2013 is very heavy on the grimacing indeed. This film is essentially Die Hard in a Nightclub, with Capt. Zhong and the other characters stuck on the premises for most of the film. It’s even set during Christmas, like Die Hard. However, Bruce Willis cracked a good number of jokes but here, Jackie Chan does nothing of the sort, gritting his teeth through the whole affair.


The vast majority of Jackie Chan’s films are exuberant and silly, the actor favouring a madcap style of physical humour and incorporating comedy into action sequences in an inventive manner. While CZ12 was almost gratingly juvenile, here, we have a Jackie who’s grizzled and hard-boiled. The problem with this is that everything that makes Jackie Chan who he is gets stripped away. There really aren’t enough action sequences in this action thriller and the main fight is a pretty brutal cage match, hits and impacts enhanced with Zack-Snyder style slow-motion and ramping. It’s not an enjoyable melee to watch; that mix of playfulness and peril that Jackie does so well replaced with more typical movie violence.



Ding Sheng, who directed Jackie in Little Big Soldier, pulls triple duty as director, screenwriter and editor. In all fairness, Police Story 2013 isn’t a poorly-constructed film and possesses some effectively dramatic moments. However, Liu Ye makes for a relatively disappointing villain. The character’s motivations are very personal, veering into soap opera territory. As an adversary, he pales in comparison to Daniel Wu’s captivating, wickedly charismatic turn as Joe Kwan in New Police Story. The idea of an aging cop mending bridges with his daughter is far from a new one but Jackie and Jing Tian work well enough as father and daughter.



The frustrating thing about Police Story 2013 is that Jackie Chan is not a bad actor and he can be convincingly serious (see Crime Story, The Shinjuku Incident or even Karate Kid) – but then, he ends up just like every other action hero. As he gets on in years, he has been open about his desire to take on more dramatic and less action-centric parts. Perhaps we should be glad that he's no longer running through spice markets butt-naked but we’re pretty sure that most of Jackie’s fans will find themselves missing the humour and vim and verve that are his trademarks. As with most of his films, a gag reel rolls as the end credits do, in which we see Jackie flub lines, get nicked by too-realistic prop knives, take some hits and goof off. It only goes to show that “action with a smile” really is his wheelhouse.

SUMMARY: While not a bad film, Police Story 2013 doesn’t play to Jackie Chan’s strengths, turning him into every other tough action hero ever. It’s surprisingly short on the stunts and thrills too.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

The Oncoming Storm: Firestorm Press Conference

For F*** Magazine

THE ONCOMING STORM:

Andy Lau and Gordon Lam Ka Tung sweep into Singapore

By Jedd Jong
Pictures by Jedd Jong

5/12/13

Producer-star Andy Lau is hoping to end 2013 with a bang with his action-thriller Firestorm. Lau, who was in Singapore with co-star Gordon Lam Ka Tung, happily proclaimed “we blew up Central!” The major Hong Kong thoroughfare of Pedder Street definitely feels the heat, serving as the location for the climactic final showdown in the film that was chosen to open ScreenSingapore. Firestorm received its world premiere at Resorts World Sentosa last night, and F*** was at the press conference at Marina Bay Sands that afternoon.

In Firestorm, Andy Lau plays Hong Kong Police Senior Inspector Lui Ming Chit. “It’s a very straightforward part,” he explained. “He lives by an established set of rules, but over the course of the film, he has to break these rules.” Gordon Lam plays To Sing Pong, former schoolmate and Judo rival to Lui Ming Chit, who falls in with the wrong crowd but is desperate to prove to his girlfriend, played in the film by Yao Chen, that he has turned over a new leaf. In order to do so, he becomes an informant to Senior Inspector Lui.

Throughout the press conference, Lam’s bromance with Lau was evident, Lau constantly ribbing his co-star and “employee”. “Since he joined my production company, he’s been begging me every year to give him a romantic part. When we auditioned the actresses, none of them agreed to act opposite Gordon,” Lau joked. In addition to the schoolboy-ish teasing, Lau also had genuine praise for Lam. “Honestly speaking, I think he’s grown a lot as an actor,” he said. “It’s his first proper action film and I think he was very successful in taking on that aspect and putting his spin on this material.” When asked if he was looking out for his own by casting Lam in the film, Andy replied “If I don’t look out for my own, who am I gonna look out for?”

Lam certainly seemed grateful for the opportunity to take on what is probably his biggest role to date. “When I entered the industry, I was very green and didn’t understand how anything worked. Everything I know, I learned from him,” Lam said of Lau. It can be said that the To Sing Pong character, with his personal history, conflict and relationships, is even more complex and more interesting than Lui Ming Chit. “He’s a character who does everything for the love of a woman,” Lam says. Lam also expressed that up until this point, he didn’t feel confident enough to take on a leading role even though he had been offered such parts, and that it was Lau’s guidance that got him through the making of Firestorm.

Lau hopes that the wham-bam action spectacle on display in Firestorm will draw crowds. “It’s a very action-packed film, and I hope that it will be able to compete closer to the level of Hollywood films in terms of its production value,” he told journalists. Lau touched on the budget and time constraints faced by the production. “If a sequence takes three months to shoot on a Hollywood production, we have to get it done in one,” he said. “I hope audiences appreciate the diligence we took in putting these sequences together.”

Senior Inspector Lui Ming Chit’s relationship with To Sing Pong is a very rocky one, and the film’s central hand-to-hand combat sequence pits them against each other. When asked if he found filming the sequence exhilarating, Lam replied “Of course I did. I’ve been waiting more than ten years to hit Andy Lau!” He describes the intense training he underwent to take on the physically-demanding role, and Lau even admitted that the shoot was harder on Lam than it was on him.

Firestorm has been post-converted into 3D. When asked about this method of presentation, Lau said that director Alan Yuen is very skilled in the area of computer-generated effects and that he has been wanting to shoot in 3D for some time. “I don’t have expertise in this area, and at first I was opposed to the idea of Firestorm as a 3D movie,” he reveals. “He (Yuen) convinced me to shoot one scene as a test, and that was the fight sequence down the stairwell. After using that to demonstrate the 3D presentation, I thought it actually didn’t look too bad. Is 3D a necessity for Firestorm? I don’t think so. This has been a learning experience for me in the area of 3D filmmaking technique. This is the first 3D cop film to come out of Hong Kong and we’re very much testing the waters.”

Lau also voiced his support for the Singapore film industry, inviting would-be directors to pitch projects to him and even approach him to star in local films. “Oddly enough, nobody from Singapore has contacted me about investing in a film here,” he said. “I saw Ilo Ilo on the plane and I 
thought that the content and the cinematography, all of it was very solid. I really would like to throw my support behind new directors and I’m being serious here, if anyone has a proposal, you can send it to my office. I may be expensive, but I’m worth it.”

When asked to compare Firestorm to the Infernal Affairs series of films, Lau observed that “ultimately, the characters in Firestorm are more proactive whereas the characters in Infernal Affairs were more reactive… What we want audiences to take away is that every decision you make has to be made with care; that one impulsive decision can affect the rest of your life.”

Lau also reminded everyone of his softer side. “I really like the scenes with the little girl,” he said of the moments between Lui Ming Chit and his goddaughter in the film. “Basically, it reminds me of my fan base that I have as a singer. When I saw them first become fans, they were about the same age as the girl in the movie, and I’ve witnessed my fans growing up over the last 30 years. Then they have children of their own, whom they introduce to my music and I can see it happen with a new generation. So, I have a soft spot for kids.”

Firestorm opens in Singapore on 12 December 2013.