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Review
by Kozo: |
Johnnie To's punishing
melodrama gives us Chow Yun-Fat as we’ve never seen
him before: with bad hair. Chow is Ah-Long, a single
father who works as a construction driver and moonlights
as a motorcycle racer. He shares a whimsical, fun relationship
with his son Porky (Wong Kwan-Yuen). Then mommy (Sylvia
Chang) pops up, disrupting everything. Sylvia is now
a well-off commercial director living in America and
Chow is happy to see her because he still loves her
even after ten whole years. Sylvia is shocked at discovering
Porky (she thought he was dead, don’t ask why), but
soon she warms to him and eventually wants to take him
back to the States. But she doesn’t want to take Ah-Long,
which is pretty awful for Chow.
Subject matter-wise, you’d
have to be dead not be be touched by what goes on, and
Chow is incredibly charismatic and likable even when
he plays a heel with bad hair. However, some of what
happens is laughable and the whole motorcycle-racing
subplot seems to come out of nowhere simply to provide
a dramatic finish to the film. Sure it’s affecting and
emotional, but given the previous ninety minutes it’s
also totally gratuitous. In the end, it’s not unlikely
that you’ll feel jerked around. Director Johnnie To
apparently never met a montage he didn’t like, as can
be exhibited by this movie and the montage-fest called Executioners. (Kozo 1995) |
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