Divergence

Divergence is the latest crime thriller to come out of Hong Kong's film industry, and all films of this genre will nonetheless be compared with the grand-daddy of them all - Infernal Affairs, which set a very high bar. Given that this film is produced by the same team, you'd expect the same high standards. While production values are similar, I'd leave it to you to decide the end verdict.

If you're expecting a strong cops and robbers storyline, then you might be disappointed. This film is heavy on relationships between the characters, their degrees of separation, and their duality. Which may not be a bad thing, but I find the dwelling on sappy moments and flashbacks a bit overboard, and at times, the audience was laughing at the improbability of these moments.

This movie unites Aaron Kwok and Ekin Cheng together for the big screen after the comic fantasy movie Stormriders. Kwok plays a cop who lost his girlfriend under mysterious circumstances 10 years ago, and in the first 10 minutes, lost a key witness to a sniper, played by Daniel Wu, who always seem to be playing nothing but baddie roles these days. However, Wu's sniper character knows that in his career, he is both the hunter, and the hunted, and at times want to prove to Kwok that he makes a better cop. Ekin Cheng's a lawyer who defends the innocent, or so it seems. While he's aware that his clients are sometimes guilty, is he idly standing by? Thrown into the mix are characters like Cheng's wife, played by the lovely Angelica Lee, who bears a strong resemblance to Kwok's girl, and thus making him a stalker of sorts, Eric Tsang as an underused pathologist, Ning Jing (the only movie I saw her in was the remake of Shanghai Grand) as a bald assassin agent, and Lo Kar Leung as Cheng's client who has shady underworld links and a pop star son, who gets kidnapped.

At times you might feel that the movie plods along, while you might already have been able to unravel the mystery mid-way. This could be due to the sappy moments I mentioned earlier, and taking centerstage is how Kwok's cop character refuses to give up looking for his girlfriend. You can understand how the character feels if you're in the same shoes - loving someone so deeply, and yet having zero closure. And when you think you see her again - is it really her, or had amnesia played a part, or has she deliberately forgotten the past? While the audience found the scene of revelation and Kwok's reaction to it funny, I felt the opposite - sometimes when the truth is revealed and you can't handle it, you shut down. Really. Trust me, I know. So if I were in his shoes, that'll probably be what will happen to me too.

However, this film does have moments which can iconify it (sort of like the Tony-Leung-pointing-a-gun-at-Andy-Lau's-head moment in Infernal Affairs). The "long run to the fish market" scene is tense, and so is the finale where 3 characters have a standoff, which actually yanked the rug off my feet.

I felt that if this film focused tightly on the plot, and lose some peripheral characters, it might just live up to its potential, and I don't think we'll see any sequels to this one.

The movie Divergence is about three men who have their lives brought together by their jobs. The movie makes it seem like there will be some very profound and mind-blowing brilliant connection among these characters when there really isn't. However the movie does create an interesting dynamic with the jobs of the three main characters, and how each character takes on the job of another (I won't spoil it for you). The characters have a good amount of development and its likely you'll make some sort of connection with Aaron Kwok's character at the very least. The action scenes are good, definitely better than the usual fare from HK recently. The cinematography of the movie really impressed me, if you pay attention there are a lot of subtle things that are done to foreshadow things in the movie. The director really knew what he was doing. The rating that the movie has right now (floating around 5.5) is definitely too low, this is an entertaining movie and impressed me since I have been a little indifferent to HK cinema recently. At the very least the this movie shows their is still room for the thriller movies in HK, despite the recent barrage of brainless comedy flicks.

Divergence tells the story of three men: A reckless hit-man simply named Coke (Daniel Wu), Suen Siu-yan a police officer whose fiancée has been missing for 10 years (Aaron Kwok), and Barrister To, a lawyer (Ekin Cheng) who works for a mobster. While conducting a routine witness transfer Suen Siu-yan feels the wrath of the hit-man Coke, after barely escaping with his life he starts further investigation into the case, the prize being Barrister To's gangster boss. At this point, three seemingly unrelated lives converge into a hailstorm of bullets and bloodshed.

If it sounds like typical Hong Kong action flick thats because it is. Everything about this film, at a cursory glance, is typical. The Acting is well-done, and the cinematography and Direction is also good, and the action is good too. But there is still something lacking in Divergence. I had to watch this film twice to figure out what was missing. On the second viewing I figured it out. This movie has no heart. It has everything that makes a good action film but in the end, you just don't care about the characters. The film makes all the stops and covers all the bases, and it should be a great film. But sadly, it's not, I was hoping for a great gunkata thriller but I was sadly disappointed.

Not the slam bang police action of Infernal Affairs (the original, not the ripoff), but there is enough action to make it worth your while.

It focuses more on the characters and their relationships: the cop, Suen Siu Yan (Aaron Kwok, the hit man, Koo (Daniel Wu), and the lawyer, To Hou Sun (Ekin Cheng).

Suen has been looking for his girlfriend Amy for 10 years. To's wife Su Fong (Angelica Lee) looks like her and actually plays two parts, one in flashback. He acts like a stalker as he follows her everywhere.

Eric Tsang from Internal Affairs is here, but he is a cop in Missing Persons, not a mobster.

Kwok and Wu are great, and the action is good at times, but there just doesn't seem to be something that brings it all together.

Just like its Hollywood contemporary, the fabled jewel of the east, also known as Hong Kong, shovels mouthfuls of filler in the general direction of its loyalist audiences. And similar to fluff done anywhere else, HK's variety also comes in the irritating form of polished, well-supervised products with at least acceptable technical merits and yet little beyond.

We recently had two mega-stars like Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung suffer through mediocre episode Jiang Hu, further thrashing the over-strained underworld genre, and here comes a Benny Chan flick to additionally burden the cops and crooks theme with uninvited baggage. At least in Chan's case the memory of capable actioner New Police Story still lingers, so we'll forgive him the helming of Divergence and its, in essence, vacuous content and pretty embarrassing conclusion. You'd be right in expecting more from Chan and his writer cohort Ivy Ho (who previously penned classic July Rhapsody), but nonetheless both failed to come up with any worthy goods this time around.

Presumably, Divergence gets its moniker from the three main personages operating inside the film's confused and unfulfilled promise. Suen (Aaron Kwok) is a sarcastic police officer working various, rather high-profile cases, at least one of which we witness going bad with the baddie under Suen's protection buying the farm in a gruesome fashion courtesy of the second main character, a hit-man known simply as Coke (Daniel Wu, who lost some weight and much appeal in a role that's beginning to smack of typecasting). Coke's success and Suen's misfortune set in motion a series of events that supposedly want to point out the ironic nature of life, the universe, and whatever the people counting box office returns happen to report.

The terminated criminal Suen was sheltering leaves a mean triad boss (Gallen Lo) feeling a whole lot better about things, but ultimately lands everyone in more trouble since the latter's enemies soon move to equalize by retaliating against his family. This sort of complication doesn't make Suen's life any easier as he tries to focus on capturing renegade Coke and his sultry female accomplice (done by mainlander Ning Jing).

Defending the underworld elements is attorney To Hou Sung, done by our favorite hunk Ekin Cheng, and here completing the triumvirate of male leads. Although silent and reserved, To quickly gets on Suen's nerves, and not just for his application of the law as an excuse for things one would sooner sweep under the floorboards. There's another element figuring in, further showing us how intertwined the trio is and why even minute occurrences can have repercussions much later down the line, hence Divergence. The factor in question is naturally a woman, and one who perhaps has been missing for the better part of a decade. It's the apple in the eye of cop Suen, an ex called Fong, portrayed with minimal gusto by gorgeous Angelica Lee. The disgruntled cop obsesses over his former lover and her vanishing all those years ago, even though we don't see much of their relationship other than contrived, hokey memory sequences and Kwok's miserable cry fest moments as fortified with extra-dumb instances of pseudo-animalistic howling. Was there really a need for such mundane clichés?

As if that wasn't enough, someone had the brilliant idea of encumbering Suen with several idiotic attempts at self destruction, resulting in him miraculously surviving and changing cars about as often as you do socks. Must have been quite the improvement in HK auto insurance since we last looked into the matter. Plus, the music people, bless their souls, thought it prudent to include one of the cheesiest collections of sentimental overtures one has heard in a long, blissfully quiet time. It's all enough to make you reach for the hurl bag.

And as we sit through the travails of Suen and his struggle with shadows of the past, it becomes apparent none of the main characters gets enough space to mature and grow, thus the various pieces never click. This trickles down to supporting figures like Ning Jing and too-prolific Eric Tsang as a jolly, noodle-slurping police medical examiner who never loses his appetite no matter how grisly the stiffs. Ha ha but not all that funny, thank you.

Not even the action itself lives up to whatever high expectations you may have of this project, if any. Fighting's pretty lame and basic, there's little gunplay, and the car chases seem to use the same beat up Mazdas you've seen in scores of older HK movies. But probably the biggest disappointment comes when the thing finishes, with characters coming out of nowhere to reach an easy, convenient and utterly ridiculous ending that somehow explains the various "enigmas" you were supposed to fuss over during the plot. But of course there was no fussing at all, seeing as how can anybody care about a story lacking in so many departments to begin with?

At least for Divergence Angelica Lee looks her best yet, so for all thus inclined mayhap there's some incentive to watch yet. On all other counts, Divergence misses the mark big time, leading down paths of inadequacy any film buff needn't even consider following.

Rating: **