"What kind of people wins the lottery? Also what kind of people are rich and talented? Answer is someone else."
We have all seen countless movies about middle aged married men going out to behind the backs of their wives to have a "happy ending". Hi, Fidelity takes a different route and instead focuses the attention on the reasons and process of a bunch of middle aged women doing the same deed. This is without doubt an extremely entertaining film that takes the audience along for the entire ride. Add in career best performances from Michelle Ye and surprisingly William Chan in a duo role, the film succeeds in showing the processes and the reasons behind the female's mental state in the art of cheating. Still, like most Hong Kong movie, the build-up is great, but the finale seems to flatter as the director takes the shortcut rather than fulfilling the unacquainted potential the film possessed.
Michelle Ye handles her difficult role extremely well as she tackles all the pressing issues that surrounds the film. In particular, in the scene when she confronts Pat Ha by expressing her love, it was menacingly seductive. For the first time in his life, William Chan impresses in his duo role, not only is he convincing, but ended up somewhat likable and flawed. It is a far cry from his days of roaming the magazine headlines for just one reason – Angelababy. For a minor character in the film, Chapman To rises to the occasion and steals the stole as Michelle Ye's gangster boss husband In the scene when To confront Ye over her fidelity, he was downright impressive, calm and rhetorical. Despite obviously being a bit part role, To manages to transform his small role into something more memorable than it should be. As for the film weakest link, it goes to veteran Pat Ha and the much missed 90s cinema – Carrie Ng. Both are unable to bring their respective characters to light and are borderline average at best.
All in all, Hi, Fidelity is actually a pretty good film; it entertains and once it starts the run of ballet just never stops. However, the film has a number of noticeable flaws, including a full forwarded ending, disappointing performances from the experienced Pat Ha and Carrie Ng and resulting in a film that does not know whether to be serious or not. Still, there is a lot to like about this film and in terms of entertainment, it delivers. It is certainly nothing special and sometimes it pays to expect less. Hi, Fidelity is something different to the usual fair and it ends up being a good trashy film, but nothing great
Neo rates it 7/10
