A police operation to catch a kidnapper goes horribly wrong and the victim, a young boy, dies. Hui-yeung, the older sister of the killed child, gets traumatized, but a couple of years later she seems to have found her balance again and even is friends with the police officers who made the fatal mistake.
But now, Hui-yeung (Karena Lam) needs a lot of money to pay a treatment for her seriously ill husband, and becomes a kidnapper herself. Alas, her plan to get ransom from a millionaire misfires: the little boy she caught is not the son of the rich man but of inspector Ho Yuan-chun (Rene Liu) - the leader of a kidnapping task force and incidentally the woman whose team botched Hui-yuengs case.
This is a nice little cat-and mouse-game between two strong and desperate women and it is a show case for Karena Lam and Rene Liu. While Lam has played a couple of characters that balance precariously on the edge (INNER SENSES and KOMA come to mind), it is surprisingly Rene Liu (A WORLD WITHOUT THIEVES) who gives the stronger and tenser performance. Her police inspector and mother taps in unsuspected amounts of resourcefulness, while the stakes for her get higher and desperater. The character even has some darker traits you wouldn't usually expect.
Karena Lam is equally fine as the cool mastermind that has to adapt quickly to the changed scenery when her foolproof plan misfires. There is a certain tenderness and insecureness beneath her ruthlessness and you sympathize with her as much as you do with Rene Lius character.
Unfortunately there are some flaws in the script that diminish the efforts of the excellent actors: director Law Chi-leung (DOUBLE TAP, INNER SENSES, KOMA) relies too much on lucky (or unlucky) coincidences that more than once amount to veritable deus ex machina effects. And than there is a that very amateurish looking stunt/cg-effect near the end....
But for the most part of the movie, Law keeps the tension up and there are only one or two instances when the pace slackens and the characters get a bit lost in their sub-plots.
All in all a fast and often exciting thriller with good performances, a not so good script and a quite weak ending that calls for some goodwilll by the viewer.
2 comments:
Hi, I stumble upon your blog by chance, and surprise to see that we watched a lot of common films!
Just curious on how you choose what movies to watch?
Anyway, keep up the good work, and I will keep checking up here whenever I don't know what movie to watch! :)
Hi,
glad you enjoy my scribblings.
How do I choose what to look? That's what I ask myself a lot. There are some actors and directors I automatically drift to: Lau Ching-wan, Simon Yam, Charlene Choi (strange choice, but so it is...), Steven Chow, Park Chan-wook, Johnnie To, to name just a few. And then there are decisions based on experience: korean melodrams and comedies are often worth to check out, Hong Kong action movies from the 80s and 90s are a sure bet, and japanese exploitation flix from the 70s (especially with Meiko Kaji or Miki Sugimoto) are just great.
But I think, mostly it's just curiosity and the joy of discovering something new that lets me watch a movie.
And I hope I can surprise you too with some of my "findings".
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