This was billed as a sequel of sorts to Beast Stalker, but in the manner of Hong Kong films, it's only a sequel because of the two leads, Nic Tse and Nick Cheung.  It also stars Kwai Lun Mei and Sherman Chung.  Well, let's see, I expected this to be pretty good as I very much enjoyed Beast Stalker and had heard good things about it.  Sadly, it does not live up due to a litany of problems including Nic Tse's wooden acting and Nick Cheung's even MORE wooden acting.  The only good spot of acting is delivered by Taiwanese actress Kwai Lun Mei who shows herself capable of an expression and emotion.  The other problem with this movie vs Beast Stalker is that it utterly FAILS at making you care about any of the characters.

The plot is...honestly pretty thin.  It takes the title a little too seriously, being all about stool pigeons, or people in the criminal realm who betray their ilk to the cops for cash.  IN a role reversal, Nic Tse is the criminal and Cheung is the cop.  Nic Tse wants money for his sister, Nick Cheung wants to arrest some jewel thieves, Kwai Lun Mei wants to go back to Taiwan, and she might want Nic Tse too, but that's hardly played out in any tangible way.  What follows is a brutal montage of, well, brutality.  But the movie takes such a blase, monochrome look at it that it just sort of slides by on screen without any emotional attachment.  Again, compared to Beast Stalker that pulled you right into the lives of everyone involved.  Even the criminal as awful as he was, you could sort of see his point of view.  There is none of that here.

Another general problem is that Nic Tse really cannot play this type of role.  He simply isn't that versatile and the sad-sack low-life or the sad-sack good guy (Bodyguards) is just not in his range.  Instead he is overly wooden and fails to make you see anything in his character other than Nic Tse.

In conclusion, this is not a good movie.  Avoid, unless you really want to see Nic Tse get beat up for some reason.

Mood hungry Tags: action, buddy, nicholas tse, nick cheung

Well, on the surface, this is just your basic goofy Stephen Chow/Wong Jing pairing, including an almost starring role by the director. But, allegedly, Wong Jing couldn't afford much of Stephen Chow's time, and so the Grandmaster is in more of a supporting role here with Nick Cheung taking over star responsibilities.

The plot is relatively simple. Nick Cheung plays an undercover cop who hates swindlers. So when he's directed to take down master swindler Ferrari (Wong Jing), he gets swindled left and right, embarrassed and made fun of, often by buxom Kelly Lin who smirks her way through this one. At the end of his wits, he finally agrees to enlist the talents of Wong Sifu (Chow) who is his girlfriend's sister's husband. Sandra Ng is pretty hilarious as the Sifu's wife too. The movie is rife with parodies of other movies and some of it is hilarious, some of it not so much.

But to be honest, the most interesting thing about this movie to me is Stephen Chow playing against type. And I mean, really against type. Normally this sort of arrogant asshole character of his would get shown up, or brought down and discover a heart or something, but not in this one. Wong Sifu is an ass from the very start. He swindles his family, even his kid, and he refuses to help Nick Cheung for anything less than 10million dollars. Or unless Nick Cheung can trick him. Which is of course impossible, and Chow punches him in the face when he fails. And even when he finally does help, it's because Ferrari sends people to kill him and he gets pissed.

Stephen Chow plays this role with an attitude that's like barely restrained annoyance, and it comes out in everything he does, even his trademark grin. His hair is flecked with grey, he wears glasses for most of the film, and he just has a completely different air from anything he did previously. In fact, he honestly never does anything goofy. Like I said, he has a dangerous, annoyed air about him the entire time. Even in the obligatory kung-fu scene. He's ambushed by a baddie who grabs his shirt. It rips off his shoulder as he mercilessly pummels the guy into the ground. He doesn't smile even once. He looks positively pissed, in fact.

This was, of course, also the last film he did before Shaolin Soccer, 3 years later. And he hasn't done a movie for someone other than himself since. So, Idk, you can probably read something into that. But it was interesting to see him play such a dangerous, not-nice character and well, still chew scenery like he always does. It was pretty sexy, ngl.

Mood hungry Music ＳＣＡＮＤＡＬ – Ring! Ring! Ring! Tags: comedies, nick cheung, sandra ng, stephen chow

Speaking of wacky wuxia...I had the dubious pleasure of watching The Duel last night. Another review billed it as at least 90 minutes of amusement, but it really wasn't. As much as I like Nick Cheung, his antics got old after about the first 30. Ekin Cheng was about as robotic as I've ever seen him, and that's saying something. Even Andy Lau had moments of overacting so ridiculous that I started laughing in spite of myself. Nevertheless though, he was still the most tolerable in a film full of things that set my teeth on edge.

The plot...oh there was a plot? Actually yes, sort of. It started out with a duel, thus the title. Or rather, a duel being set up. However, the rest of the movie was taken up by Nick Cheung's mugging and a side story of people being murdered by someone represented by a faceless clay doll. Everyone suspects Simon (Ekin Cheng), probably because he's so freaking without expression, he seems murderous. I don't think he really gave a crap though, his expression never changed. But at least, it would have made sense in terms of the faceless doll.

The other bit was the Princess (Wei Zhao) trying desperately to get into the pants of Cool (Andy Lau), who shows up a couple of times to display his awesome power, but otherwise mostly sulks in a cave. Then, it turns out he's been killing people this whole time so he can replace the Emperor (Patrick Tam). The duel was just a feint to distract everyone. But, naturally it takes place anyway, and Andy Lau, looking like Sephiroth, naturally loses cause he's the ~bad guy~.

Other than Andy Lau's awesome evil smirky sinisterness and consummate attractiveness, I was mostly only interested to discover that the Emperor was a younger Patrick Tam, after seeing him as the Duke in Spirit of the Sword. Heh, oh well.

Mood awake Music 白黒キネマ – 疾走 Tags: andy lau, ekin cheng, nick cheung, wuxia

Andy Lau did a lot of gambling movies back in the day. But unlike some of the others, these two really are sequels, and if you like the first one, you might as well watch the second.

Essentially Andy Lau plays a "sharper", at least, that's how it's translated in the subs. But basically he's a professional cheater. He gambles, yes, and he has some skill, but most of his skill involves cheating. In the first movie, he starts out a complete and utter prick before going to jail for murder. Once he gets out, he's more mellow and his hair is grayer. That's where Dragon, played by Nick Cheung, comes in. As near as I can tell, he works for King's (Andy Lau's) brother, but this is never really explained or come back to. So we'll just ignore that and call him his sidekick. He's a low-level gangster that sucks at nearly everything and is constantly being bullied by an extremely crooked cop called Eastwood.

The plot is really about King and how he tries to resume his life after jail. He tries to find his wronged wife (wronged by him mostly) and child, he shows Dragon how to bet on horse races, he takes several opportunities to cheat people out of their money, which are mostly successful, and he tries to pretend he's not interested in Dragon's sister. An actual point to the story doesn't come in until somewhere after the halfway mark when the brother of the guy King killed shows up and wants King to help him cheat ultimate gambler Macau Mon. King refuses, but some blackmailing goes down and eventually he does. This sets up a wacky chain of events including a fake World Cup and a long game of Big 2.

I think Wong Jing is one of those directors people love to hate. But honestly, he's pretty funny and he sets up some interesting movies. This one is a strange egg. It's not exactly dramatic, not super violent, but it has moments, it's funny at times, but definitely not a comedy. It sort of amused me the rather over-the-top chauvinism and the penis jokes. So yeah, if abuse of women bothers you, you might want to think twice about watching it.

Other things...Andy Lau was awesome, as he usually is. It helps that he's really good at this sort of cool, minorly villainous character. Nick Cheung as Dragon was pretty hilarious, and not over-the-top in his silliness. I'm still in awe that he's the same guy that plays Hung in The Beast Stalker about ten years later.

Now, in the sequel, another guy (Pak-Cheung Chan) has made an appearance and Dragon spends most of the movie kidnapped. This movie is far less serious than the first one. Essentially one ridiculous situation after another as King and his new sidekick, Lukchard, try to retrieve China's most wanted, Peter Chu. Naturally the meet a couple of hot babes on the way. One of them is Kelly Lin who rolls around topless with Andy in another movie, Fulltime Killer, lol. ANYway, this movie is filled with double-crosses and ridiculous schemes and even more ridiculous cameos by Wong Jing.

However, the lack of seriousness has one major pro; the movie is pretty much hilarious. The absolute best scene is when the girls and King and his sidekick have stuffed Peter Chu into a car and are preparing to drive off with him. But then Lukchard reveals he can't drive a manual transmission. As they argue about who will drive, it finally comes out that not one of the four can drive period. It's hard to miss the hilarious set-up here. A group of Asians and none of them can drive. XD It's so stereotypical but pulled off so convincingly, I've got to hand it to Wong Jing, he has a flare for comedy.

If I had to pick, I probably liked the second one better. As absurd as it was, it had more of a plot and was more clearly a comedy, or an action-comedy as it were. But both movies were entertaining and mostly enjoyable. The second one wasn't as absurdly chauvinistic, but it was plenty crude and the penis jokes were mostly replaced by general porn jokes, lol.

This pair of reviews brought to you by Andy Lau's well-used sly smirk.

Mood creative Tags: andy lau, gambling, kelly lin, nick cheung, wong jing