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Review
by Kozo: |
They
won't go away, and most people don't want them to.
Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung, AKA: The Twins, are
now their own institution, having created a complete
minigenre of sloppy motion pictures packaged entirely
around their grinning, uber-cute mugs. In a time when
Hong Kong Entertainment is seriously suffering, these
two girls have managed to capture the hearts and wallets
of numerous preteens (and disturbingly enough, even
some post-teens) looking for the latest and not-so-greatest
out of Hong Kong.
Still, the girls themselves aren't
really that bad, and have shown some talent amidst
the sloppy blockbusters, cheesy music videos, and
shopping mall appearances their EEG indentured service
contracts stipulate. Though they've yet to graduate
to true A-list actor status, the girls have something
going for them beside marketing support. Unfortunately, Twins Mission doesn't do anything to expand
on whatever potential the Twins possess, and instead
serves up a messy and frankly inane motion picture
that wastes the talents of nearly everyone involved.
At least your kids may enjoy it.
The terrible EEG twosome
play Jade and Pearl, a couple of acrobatic circus
girls who are actually billed as twins, though really
look very little alike. The girls spend their days
performing in the circus, while sparring over their
mutual obsession with David Copperfield. You see,
the girls REALLY like David Copperfield, and will
even engage in mini kung-fu battles in their dressing
room over who gets to be Copperfield's future wife.
They also argue over an autographed photo of Copperfield
during a circus performance, whereupon the photo ends
up in a hungry hippo's maw. This is obviously comedy
gold. Forget the fact that neither girl knows David
Copperfield, what's scary here is that someone actually
wrote this plot point into the film and assumed it
would be interesting enough to carry three or four
scenes in a major motion picture. It obviously isn't
that interesting, but neither is the rest of Twins
Mission, which makes those Twins Effect movies look like rich narrative masterpieces. Yes, Twins Mission is that ill-conceived.
Here's the rundown on
Twins Mission: before they became drooling
David Copperfield groupies, the girls were previously
members of a weird organization known as "The
Twins", where groups of twins were trained into
kung-fu masters in order to perpetrate spiffy feats
of high-tech thievery. A former member of the Twins
is Lau Hay (Wu Jing), whose twin brother is deathly
ill with cancer. Lau Hay is traveling with a roving
Buddhist caravan led by Uncle Luck (Sammo Hung), who's
charged with protecting the "Heaven's Bead",
a cheap-looking MacGuffin that supposedly has mystical
healing powers.
However, some evil Twins are after
the Bead, because their boss, Mr. Mok (Sek Sau), wants
it to trade it with the beautiful Lilian (Jess Zhang),
who owns a plot of land that he's after. Mok figures
she'll trade the land for the Bead because her sister
Happy (Qiu Lier) has cancer. But Mok's shadowy partner-in-crime
apparently wants the Bead for other reasons, though
its never truly explained. What we do know is that
the Bead has somehow ended up with sex shop proprietor
Fred (Steven Cheung of Boy'z), who hides out in a
shopping mall after the evil Twins force feed rats
to his buddy. Fearing a similar fate, he hides in
his own shop and doesn't run away like a smart guy
would.
Somehow, Uncle Luck and former
Twins leader Chang Chung (Yuen Wah) convince Pearl,
Jade, and a bunch of good Twins members to join them
to stop Mok from getting the Bead. Or maybe they don't
want Mok to get the land. Or maybe their goal is simply
restoring the estranged relationship between Chang
Chung and his former Twins charges, which soured after
he left them with the circus, removed their Twins-identifying
tattoos by searing them with an iron, and broke his
promise to buy them McDonald's hamburgers. Um...yeah.
We'll stop talking about the plot now because if you
haven't figured it out already, it's pretty much a
mess. As crappy storylines go, Twins Mission takes the cake, because it doesn't even provide a
logical reason for any of its onscreen excesses to
occur. Is all this hand-wringing occurring because
everyone wants to save the crying girl with cancer?
Or is there a larger value to the Heaven's Bead that
causes people to throw away their lives and enlist
in a completely unnecessary crusade? Why can't Mok
find an easier, less roundabout way to get the land
he's looking for? And is the promise of some kung-fu
action worth this completely inane and incomprehensible
movie?
The answer to that last
question: sometimes. Twins Mission does serve
up the requisite doses of energetic martial arts action,
and it does it frequently enough that one may forgive
the film's other glaring debits. The fights involving
the Twins aren't so hot; they're heavily wire-assisted
and largely edited to hide the fact that the girls
are doubled. Luckily, the lion's share of martial
arts action is performed by Sammo Hung, Yuen Wah,
and Wu Jing - in other words, guys who actually know
their stuff instead of miniature girls who are just
faking it. If you're looking for scenes of the three
martial artists going at it, then you may find some
joy in Twins Mission, provided that you do
two things: lower your expectations and hit the fast-forward
button to skip all the filler.
The film's action sequences
are not inventive or especially noteworthy, though
they do provide enough impact and routine flair to
entertain. The filmmakers have the good sense to let
Wu Jing handle the most key martial arts sequences,
relegating the Twins to comic relief duty during the
film's loaded climax. There's also the opportunity
to see a rare Yuen Wah vs. Yuen Wah match, plus the
presumably amusing sight of seeing scads of real-life
twins duking it out. In one of the film's unique achievements,
real twins were cast as the movie's Twins, meaning
these are actors who can fake kung-fu AND have a twin
sibling. Apparently you can find anything in China.
Sadly, the action is
only one portion of Twins Mission, and the
rest is hard to deem as acceptable. Aside from the
criminally uninteresting plot, the film is directed
in a messy and unconvincing manner, and possesses
leaden exposition and a bombastic music score that's
never earned. The actors don't play characters as
much as they play character outlines, and their personal
trials and conflicts are barely developed, if not
completely nonexistent. Also, the CG effects are amateurish
in a manner unbecoming of a film industry wishing
to be taken more seriously. Worst of all, the filmmakers
have the gall to set things up for a sequel, which
is an iffy prospect anyway because Twins Mission doesn't even generate enough interest to warrant its
own existence, let alone a sequel. The characters
and situations never interest that much, so why should
anyone out there want a sequel? Just so we can get
more crappy visual effects and faked fighting by the
Twins? Have Hong Kong audiences really sunk that low?
Probably yes,
as the current vogue of popstar-fueled everything
in Hong Kong Cinema is as much a reflection of the
public's tastes as it is of EEG's marketing muscles.
Justified or not, people like the Twins, and Twins
Mission is fast and silly enough to charm the
preteen audience that snaps up their CDs, photo albums,
and diet drinks. They may not even mind that the Twins
are just ensemble players here, since the girls do
appear in their most popular variation, i.e. as adorable,
feisty girls whose cuteness is as non-threatening
as it is photogenic. The rest of us will merely have
to contend ourselves with the decent action, plus
another missed opportunity to see the Twins do something
other than smile, pout, and act silly. The Twins have
been around for six years and fans are forever talking
about their potential. They seem to have some, so
wouldn't now be the time to build upon it? They can't
stay this young and charming forever, so building
upon the promise shown in films like Funeral March, Beyond Our Ken, Diary, or even A
Chinese Tall Story would be a good way to go for
either girl. It would be better for us, too. (Kozo
2007) |
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