Fan sau ji do

After patrons at a Coyote Ugly-style Hong Kong nightclub begin to turn up dead, their bodies bearing strange wounds and traces of a rare poison, Melissa (Marsha Yuen)—one of its five feisty female owners, and an avid snake collector—becomes the prime suspect. Inspector Chi-Wai Man (Jackie Lui) is assigned to the case, and, as the bodies pile up, he slowly falls for the lovely Melissa (despite being phobic about reptiles). Can the woman he cares about really be a cold-blooded killer?

Snake Charmer suffers heavily from an excess of irritating editing and erratic camera-work (especially whip pans, each accompanied by annoying 'whoosh' sound effect), but strip away all of the unnecessarily showy film-making techniques, and there's still very little of interest—a mediocre mystery, saddled with dodgy CGI effects (the poisoned victims hallucinate, imagining that they are being attacked by giant snakes), boring action scenes, dull dialogue (including a riveting chat about Japanese coffee and German crockery), and forgettable characters.

When two of the most memorable things about the film are its use of a bad instrumental version of The Pet Shop Boys' cover of 'Always On My Mind', and a hilarious anti-drugs message during the closing credits, then it's fairly safe to say that Snake Charmer has all the appeal of a sack full of angry King Cobras.

I have to start off by saying that this movie was one of the longest movies I had to sit through. And by that I don't mean that the movie was literally hours and hours long, no, I mean that movie moved at such a mind-numbingly slow pace that it felt like eons and eons came and went.

For a Hong Kong movie, then this without a doubt amongst the top five worst movies to make it out of Hong Kong that I have had the misfortune of watching so far. Why? Well because the storyline and plot of the movie was just so ridiculously lame and dull, that you just wish a snake would come and finish off your misery.

The story in "Snake Charmer" is about some mystery murders that take place in Hong Kong where the victims are found poisoned by a very rare and deadly toxin. A single woman (played by Marsha Yuen), who works as a night club called Club Medusa, is tied to the murders, as she is the last to be seen with the victims in every single case. Inspector Chi-Wai Man (played by Jackie Lui Chung-yin) is assigned to the case and is working on a tight deadline to crack the case.

The plot of the movie was really weak and was lacking innovation and plausibility. And it was really hard to buy into it, much less really enjoy it. And to make matters worse, then the Prism Leisure DVD release comes with one language track only; dubbed English! Yeah, dubbed English! Can you believe it? A 2002 movie that is dubbed and doesn't have the possibility to change language track to the original Cantonese track. Ridiculous. And as with almost every other English dubbing in movie history, it was horrendous.

So you might ask if there was no good parts to "Snake Charmer"? Well there were some. For starters, the movie was shot in Hong Kong, which always has an allure for me, at least. Plus there is a bunch of attractive women in it, if that is what you look for in a movie. Not personally why I watch movies, but it was clear that they were cast for their looks and not their abilities to act. Eye candy? Sure...

The movie made use of CGI as well, and it was quite bad. Sure it was a nice effort, but the bad CGI made it come off in a worse light than it was intended. Some might say even bad CGI is better than no CGI. I will leave that up to the individual to decide; I know where I stand on the matter.

So is there any reason as to sit down and actually watch "Snake Charmer"? Well, personally, I suffered through the approximate hour and a half that the movie lasted, but it was a struggle to do so. And not even being a major fan of Hong Kong cinema, as I am, helped spur on enthusiasm for the movie. There weren't any familiar and talented actors or actresses in the movie to make it worth sitting through. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that the people cast for the movie did bad jobs, not at all. They did good enough jobs, however the movie enjoyment was just shut down by the horrible English dubbed language track.

"Snake Charmer" is not a movie that I would really recommend to anyone, not unless you are really, really into Hong Kong cinema, and just have to watch every single movie you can get your hands on (much like me).