Tian ji: Fu chun shan ju tu

There is nothing worth to say about this movie, except, don't waste your precious time, not even when you could do it with a fast forward button.

Our movie channel just put it on the shelf for on-demand playing, and after hearing so much bad comments about it when it was on the big screen, I made it a challenge for myself to try to sit through it.

EPIC FAIL.

To the extent that you want to find a way to unsee it, but then you simply can't, because the visuals throughout were so colourful, or even rich, BUT WITHOUT A POINT.

I really wanted to give it -10.

I'm honestly not sure where to begin with this review, there is so much to say and all must be written. I think it best to begin with the positive aspects of Switch, since there is only one.

Pros: Switch is the most aesthetically beautiful piece of crap I've ever seen. Gorgeous women, gorgeous scenery, brilliant colors, cool technology/gadgets throughout the whole movie.

That being said, Switch should have been a music video, because Aesthetics aside, absolutely nothing worked for it as a movie, nothing.

Cons: - Switch makes absolutely no sense. - The locations are all unexplained and jump to one another magically without any means of transportation. You can't track who is where, where they are, or why they are there -- they sort of just ... appear in places all of a sudden. - There are very few fight sequences, and the ones that do exist are cliché, poorly shot, and not impressive. Andy Lau is SO underutilized. He mostly hits people with guns and shoots them. - The crazy sci-fi gadgets and technology are SO random, out of place, never explained, and frankly, ridiculous. - You never see who Agent Xiau is working for, who DOES he work for? WHO IS HE? What the hell is he doing?! - This movie would be better on mute.

Think of switch as a bunch of intensely poor, jumbled scenes that skip to one another with no transition or explanation for what feels like 3 hours. It's as if only Jay Sun, the director knows what's going on, and he's the only one who cares. I think each character in this movie dies like 3 times. It's really hard to convey how terrible this movie is. I had read all the reviews while watching it too see what other people thought and they all hit it on the head. This movie is a joke. A really beautiful joke. How did it ever get made?

Someone steals an ancient Chinese painting from a museum in a high tech operation. It's actually only half of a painting. Long time ago it was cut in half and in a couple of days for the first time there will be an exhibition presenting the complete painting with both halves.

A bunch of Westerners are after the stolen part and some lady known as the Empress, as well as some gentle soft-spoken Japanese mean guy. Xiao is part of some government outfit and he's tasked with recovering the stolen painting. He's married, has a son, but his job as secret agent requires him to be a ladies man. Sure enough, all the girls in this movie are after him for some reason.

When the sale of the painting is about to take place, Xiao recovers it. But the Japanese guy kidnaps his son in exchange for the painting. But Xiao and his team won't rest until both halves of the painting are safe in time for the exhibition.

The story of Switch sounds straight-forward enough but the way it's told is a complete mess. While I'm sure the director is not entirely blameless, the main problem here is the bizarre editing. The entire movie comes across as fragmentary. Every "scene" lasts only a few seconds and then is faded out as we rotate between all the characters in this movie and no point is ever made. There is very little dialogue and very little action. Instead what Switch is all about is empty style. The actors wonder in and out of fancy luxurious LED-lit interiors and a few exteriors in China and Dubai without doing or saying much. Even the main character Xiao doesn't do much but drive around in a certain brand of vehicles and for a good part of the movie we don't even see him, making it a movie without much of a main character. Without trying to sound stereotypical, I had a very hard time distinguishing among the female characters. I think I could identify maybe 4 of them--the wife, some overwatch girl, Xiao's main squeeze when he's undercover, and a girl who likes him but works for the Japanese guy. But I may be wrong. That said, all the girls are beautiful.

I'm surprised this movie got international distribution. Despite the budget and excessive opulence, it doesn't have a whole lot going for it. It's not a thrilling movie, it's not an action movie, there's some drama, and CGI scenes look rather cheesy. The movie even engages in some political polemics. It makes the Japanese look pretty bad and it features a hilarious song with some very politically incorrect lyrics that make a mockery of Western "values." What it does have going for it is some of the scenery. Sound is surprisingly very well done. The Japanese guy is surrounded by Cirque-du-Soleil-type acrobats who are also killers. And in the end we get a scene were all these girls confront one of Xiao's girls, don't know which one. That's a cool fighting scene. But for all the fancy sets, the final two confrontations takes place in some really lame settings. The end is also somewhat puzzling.

i suggested that the director of switch ought to be banned in film business for the money this movie wasted, the costings he spoiled and the audiences he disgusted. it was supposed to be a 3D movie, and they charged it as one, but the only thing that was 3D in this movie was the subtitles, so i just watched it without the 3D glasses, then i realized i had wasted time and money on this crap, my rage after watching switch was beyond description, just like all of the audiences in the cinema. i was so angry that i could not fall asleep during the movie, just don't get it how something so disgusting could pass the authority and release to audiences, and all the cinema in China canceled star trek into darkness to make room for switch, made you no choice but to watch it, cause there is nothing else showing in cinema, most of us thought we should give it a shot, and the results are deadly. if i'd know ,i'd even want to get paid to watch it.

We had seen the movie as a preview of another movie we had watched, and the trailer looked quite good and it was partially shot in Dubai as well.

Sadly the movie is a total disaster.

Director Jay Sun should be prohibited to make any other movies. The story is incomplete told, scenes and locations are changing permanently without being explained properly.

The dubbing of the original Chinese movie to English was so bad that i felt after 10 minutes already the will to leave the cinema. A lot of other people did that. It was somehow like a Mission Impossible in bad, despite having fancy gadgets in the movie and a lot of Nokia phones and Audi cars (sorry you should have chosen another movie for your product placement) the movie never really went good. Even the end is not logic and not explained well.

I do honestly not understand how a scrappy movie like this got released at all. The CGI effects specially when the car is hanging on a helicopter and thrown into the Atlantis the Palm Hotel it looks just horrible.

Resume: Don't waste 2 hours of your life with this movie. It is 100% not worth it and the Reel Cinemas should take the movie of the list and refund the money to the people who went to see it.