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Review
by Kozo: |
Andrew
Lin gets a rare starring role in Wife From Hell,
a horror-drama-snoozefest about a man's midlife crisis
and the collateral damage that comes with it. The
Alive member plays Ken Kwan, who's married to the
loyal, sweet May (Candy Lo). Ken apparently could
have been a contender in the medical profession, but
his wife's medical condition has held him back. Her
asthma once cost him a precious overseas internship,
and prevented him from becoming a medical superstar.
Now he runs a clinic, where he spends his time treating
common patients and looking bored.
That's not the end of Ken's
marital misgivings. May is sweet and dotes on Ken,
but life with her is rather mundane, plus Ken's pal
Peter (Matthew Chow) constantly rubs bad marital advice
in his face. A grade-A lout, Peter never goes home,
is always visiting prostitutes, and offers sage advice
extolling the virtues of a dead wife versus a live
one. Ken disagrees, but something about his current
life obviously gnaws at him; he's often morose around
his wife, plus he finds himself attracted to a bar
owner (Zuki Lee, bearing an arsenal of come-hither
looks), and even considers "going happy"
with a local prostitute (J.J. Jia). When a former school chum
(Jackie Lui) shows up dangling a rich job opportunity,
Ken begins to ask the obvious: is this the life he
wants for himself? And what can he do about it?
The answer: nothing,
because Ken seems to be a pretty decent guy who actually
cares for his wife. However, doubt creeps in enough
such that Ken makes a few bad choices, leading to
a spiraling series of events that can only be called
"just desserts". The development of May's
eventual transformation into the "wife from hell"
is relatively low-key, and is handled with straight-faced
seriousness by director Law Wai-Tak. The material,
however, is pretty ham-handed, and only seems sensitive
because it's got an obvious moral message. After about
forty minutes, the movie joins May in hell, as its
narrative starts to become clumsy and sloppy. Many
details emerge in supposedly clever or touching ways,
but most are simply obvious plot devices. By the time
the poorly-edited climax rolls around, it's understandable
if you simply don't care.
As Ken, Andrew Lin handles
his character's bubbling discontent well, though sometimes
the script requires him to act in egregiously laughable
ways. Candy Lo is affecting as May despite her relatively
minor screentime. The rest of the cast overplays their
characters, making whatever suspense exists into unintentional
comedy. Wife From Hell is well-meaning in that
tries to handle its subject manner without sensationalism.
However, some over-the-top emotions might have served
the film better than the inert and heavy-handed feelings
the film evokes. The payoff ultimately isn't worth
the time spent, and the film is hard to recommend
even to hardcore fans of the stars. At the very least,
the filmmakers tried, and we applaud them for their
effort. Sadly, effort isn't everything. (Kozo 2007) |
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