SYNOPSIS:
Hitman T's mission is to kill the men responsible for kidnapping
the triad leader's son. At the same time, he is also approached
by the Police Chief to assist in nabbing the triads. During
the mission, T falls for Mae, the sister of a triad member
and finds himself in a dilemma. When the Police Chief investigate
the murders, the labyrinth plot then slowly unfolds...
MOVIE
REVIEW
This
movie oozes with style, and in our opinion, too much of it.
In fact, so much attention has been paid to how the movie
looks that it ultimately fails in engaging its audience in
the story.
In
this work directed by a Brazilian, largely funded by Singapore
and starring Hong Kong veterans (behold the future cinema
of global collaborations), the versatile Francis Ng (Exiled,
Operation Undercover) is a slick hit-man who receives assignments
in the form of ang-pows (how innovative). His latest mission
is to get rid of the people who kidnapped an Italian mob leader’s
(an underused Harvey Keital) son.
Throw
in screen legend Ti Lung as a corrupted police chief, Vivian
Hsu as a pretty vase, and a whole lot of other Singaporean
TV personalities as inconsequential supporting roles, and
you’d have a movie which competed in the “World
Cinema – Dramatic” category at the 2006 Sundance
Film Festival.
Director
Max Makowski must have gotten his inspirations from Quentin
Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) and Christopher Nolan’s
Memento (2000) for his latest self-written picture. The modish
editing style (check out the computer-generated splatters
of blood!) and the confusing storytelling structure (check
out the repetitive scenes!) may only get some viewers impatient
and frustrated.
Credit
goes to Ng for his effortless portrayal of a tormented soul,
Ti for his effortless portrayal of a tainted figure of justice,
and Hsu for her effortless portrayal of, well, a typical damsel
in distress.
Credit
also goes to Singapore’s Media Development Authority’s
(MDA) strong support and funding for this movie. The first
logo that appears in the end credits is “Filmed in Uniquely
Singapore”, which explains why we had such a fun time
identifying the movie’s filming locations during its
105-minute runtime.
It
was almost as fun as spotting familiar faces like Yeo Yann
Yann, Chen Guo Hua, Paerin Choa, Hossan Leong and Chen Tianwen.
Besides
this peripheral activity, the classy cinematography by Makowski,
Lai Yiu-Fai (Infernal Affairs), Charlie Lam (Eternal Summer)
and Nick Loh managed to distract us from an otherwise messy
collaboration, which to be fair, had its potential to go places.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
This Code 3 DVD includes only one trailer for the
movie which you have probably seen a million times elsewhere.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
The disc’s visual transfer is superb, with the movie’s
moodily rich colours kept intact, while the oddly-dubbed Mandarin
language track (where is the original Cantonese track when
you want it?) is available Mandarin Dolby Digital 5.1 and
2.0.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by John Li
|
