A Chinese drama directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Leon Lai, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Karen Mok.
Four people rattle around Hong Kong. One man lives with his father and works at closed stores at night. The other man is an assassin. One woman shakes and may have some relationship with the assassin. The other woman likes rain and wants a relationship with the assassin.
I guess this is the Chinese version of Mike Leigh's British slice of life dramas. I like the camera-work more, but the plots less. There were so many good shots with dutch angles, reflections and blurs. The motorcycle through the tunnel was absolutely beautiful (image). If all you want is the video and don't care about any other aspect, I would recommend this. Not so much for any other reason. I rate it o.k.
A Chinese wuxia directed by Ching Sui-tung, starring Donnie Yen and Leon Lai.
A princess' father, the king is killed in battle and she takes the throne. Some of the government rulers/warlords are plotting against her and shoot her with a poison dart. A hermit saves her and they fall in love. The princess must restore peace to her kingdom and reunite with the hermit.
A classic example of the new Chinese way of filmmaking. The hour and a half duration seemed right because of dynamic pacing that rose and fell with action. The simplistic premise was difficult to follow in the plot because of language. More on that later. There were basically 3 characters: the princess, the hermit and soldier x infinity. Obviously, the princess and hermit were the most developed main characters. I had issues with dialogue because of subtitles. The only ones that synched with the film were clearly written by an non-English speaker. Sentence structure and word order were the main issues. This made it nearly impossible to follow the plot. The acting all seemed fine though. I really liked the sets. They all looked professional, but my favorite was the hermit's treehouse. Camera-work was all beautifully done as well. There was lots of shot variety, mostly in distances from extreme close up to sprawling landscapes. What I didn't like about video and camera were the giant battle scenes in the flat desert. Boring. There was no flying, but there may have been some undetectable wire-work involved. The audio was all mixed right and the soundtrack was typical of the area and time. Style and flavor seemed like the filmmakers had watched too much Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of Flying Daggers. This has a 5.9/10 on IMDB and 38% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. I rate it o.k. because it was very typical of the genre, area and time, but didn't really innovate or get creative and unique with the tools available.
