Tian ji: Fu chun shan ju tu

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?

Originally scheduled to be released last October but delayed due to problems with heavy post-production work, not to mention countless editing by the director, the end result is at best a patchy piece of work passing off as a Chinese version of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

Directed and written by newcomer Jay Sun, Switch is a high octane action espionage thriller filled with globe-trotting locations, an array of gizmos mostly in the form of Nokia smartphones, flashy Audi cars and a star studded cast including HK superstar Andy Lau, Taiwan's top model Lin Chiling (Red Cliff) and Chinese actors Zhang Jingchu (Protégé) and Tong Dawei (Treasure Inn).

You might think this is going to an exciting, jaw-dropping action extravaganza for the next 112 minutes but like me, your jaw is going to drop for the wrong reasons.

After a clumsy prologue which establishes the value of the famous Yuan Dynasty scroll Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, we are introduced to several characters - namely our hero, Xiao Jinhan (Andy Lau), a secret agent who is married to an insurance project director Lin Yuyan (Zhang Jingchu; while the villains include the generically named Yamamoto (Tong Dawei), an ambiguous agent, Lisa (Lin Chiling), a weird underworld leader, Empress (Siqin Gaowa) and a bunch of Caucasian thugs. What is supposedly an easy-to-follow, good versus evil action thriller becomes a hot mess under the hands of Jay Sun.

Obviously, Sun has no idea how to shoot an intense action scene or at least keep you on the edge of your seat. He prefers to jump from one scene to another without much coherence thrown in. Agent Xiao just propels from the ceiling all of a sudden. And why is Yamamoto so mesmerised by the painting? Oh we are supposed to believe Lisa is also carrying a torch for Agent Xiao. This is no music video mind you and it becomes increasingly frustrating to watch the characters as they spout their lines without much emotion and continuity. There's so much on the screen but everything just seems jarringly off. To his credit, Sun doeshave an eye for visuals; the production design is so rich and colourful, you are better off admiring the artistic touches instead of following the story.

This is an absolutely embarrassing gig for Andy Lau - just when you thought the charismatic idol finally has a chance to showcase his acting in productions liked A Simple Life and Detective Dee, Switch only makes him looks nothing more than a walking, fighting mannequin. Tong Dawei equally suffers as the tortured, psychotic villain with a laughingly bad white hairdo while Lin Chiling received the worst treatment of all, she ends up as a irritable moaning, seductive character.

Our palms turned sweaty when we watch Tom Cruise hanging off the skyscraper in Dubai; though we never really feel a thing for Agent Xiao when he fight off a few thugs and crashed his car in the grand Atlantis in Dubai as well. Sun tries to imitate even to a certain extent by engaging Hollywood stunt choreographer and 3D experts for this movie. Everything that worked in the Cruise vehicle fails in epic proportions for Switch however. It never picks up from the get-go and simply splutters all the way to the credits.

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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.

This thing (not a movie, does not deserve such label) could potentially kill a person, and it did nearly kill me so there's that. I have more enjoyment in the toilet crapping than watching this. But, I will say one thing that's good, and that it is the ultimate torture device for anyone you despise . If so, then I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this thing.

Bottom line, THIS is not a movie, does not deserve to be called or be labelled one, it is in fact a torture device.

Nothing much to add to what's already been said - gorgeous girls and locations, incoherent plot, terrible acting, script and editing, and a cleavage shot serving as an appropriately dated and clichéd finale.

What were they thinking when they made this garbage? Goodness me it's so bad it's difficult to imagine many ways in which it could be worse. Alas it's not even funny like other dreadful films like, say, Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Room, Avengers End Game. Ugh.

I resisted giving it 1/10 purely because it's not quite as bad as 365 Days, and that's my good deed for the day.

Really, don't bother.