SYNOPSIS:
A
murder case happens in "Bar Suay" where a male who
is dressed as a female is found dead in the washroom with
a gun-shot on his chest. The victim has his pants taken off
and he is holding a sharp knife in his hands. There is no
trace of struggle or dispute before he died. However, a small
amount of drugs is found at the crime scene, which the victim
is suspected to have taken...
MOVIE REVIEW:
The first thing that caught my attention was the cover of
Bar Paradise VCD’s cover. It has this cool black and
white feature that invokes a noir feeling to it. But after
watching Bar Paradise, the conclusion would be that the cover
was the only good thing about this movie.
It
has an incomprehensive plot without any clear direction that
it’s heading and it tried to impress by planting too
many weak subplots which of course became a test of patience.
Let
me fill in the plot (or subplots) that was the bulk of this
movie instead of the synopsis had stated (which only occurs
a few seconds before the credits and another few seconds near
the end).
First
we got Julian Cheung with his unshaven dark shades rugged
image, signing up to become a bar bouncer, working for an
owner with an ambiguous gender (of course, since it’s
based in Thailand and with all the stereotypical movies about
it, all pretty girls should be suspected as a transvestite
or transgender).
Trouble
soon followed as a rogue (Gordon Lam Ka Tung) with his noisy
girlfriend crashed into the bar to escape the wrath of a lady
mob boss. A confrontation occurs but due to the mysterious
identity of Julian Cheung character and the bar owner, it
quickly became a standoff and the lady mob boss backs off
for a while.
Then
Eric Tsang appears as an authoritative figure in cahoots with
the lady mob boss and subsequently discover the appearances
of Julian Cheung and the bar owner. This baffling movie then
tries to introduce more mysterious connection between them
and firing all it’s effort at other unimportant subplots
such as Gordon Lam ‘s extremely jealous girlfriend,
an abandon baby and some supposedly good friend of the bar
owner who is trying to borrow money for her useless boyfriend.
In
the end, it only managed to effectively not build any importance
to the revelation of the mysterious connection or what the
synopsis was trying to sell. Called it bad management of characters
and plots or biting off way too much than it can chew, there
is definitely no paradise to be found in this story.
MOVIE RATING:
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
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