Mou seung

Hugely invested, super casting, the movie should have been a classic action film. The acting of Chow is beyond doubt fantastic. Aaron, to me, is the first movie that showcase his best actor acting skill. All his previous movie is lawyer or police officer. This role here as a villian gives him ample chance for applying his already matured acting ability. Female lead is not first line actress in television. But she is surprisingly able to carry her role quite well together with the 2 male superstar.

The plot of the movie is not in par with the super casting. The story in the first half is ok. But towards the second half the storyline is a bit loosened, losing the excitement that the first half is carrying. Scenes of killing are excessive and unnecessary. It is as if the killing scene is added only for the purpose of showing off Chow's previous hero role in movies. It is not in line with the original plot where Chow should never be caught.

Otherwise the film is on the whole above standard and worth seeing. It is my impression wherever Chow is present in movie, the movie would be biased towards showing off his hero quality. And hence the continuity of the story is destroyed ans unnecssary scenes are added. This is the cost of seeing Chow in movie.

The plot is copied from the 1995 thriller The Usual Suspects, which though I don't think is a good movie. The pace, screenplay and execution are actually worse than those in The Usual Suspects, which make the film even more problematic.

A nice Hong Kong movie. Impressed !! Chow Yen Fa is the best celebrity ever !! How can he be still so cool and handsome in his age ?!! The story is very interesting. There are many threads talking about who is the real " Painter ". I doubt anyone will figure it out, because it might be none of the stories from different point of views is true. We will never know. So many details in this movie, and the actors were doing a great job too. They nicely performed different characters in different versions of stories. Would love to watch this again.

Obviously, the basic structure of the whole story comes from Bryan Singer's "The Usual Suspects" in 1995, but the focus of the former is the shock when the puzzle was revealed. The focus of this film is to expose the characters. Therefore, if the audience does not overstate the specific behavior of the scriptwriter in the process of writing the script, the two films actually have their own wonderful points. In addition, the surface story of the Hong Kong-style crime film really maintains the entertainment effect in the first half of the film, and Chow Yun-fat's highly romantic performance is actually a kind of figurative externalization of the character, which can be understood as an extension of the theme of the story.

This turned out better than I expected actually. Although some reviewers had mentioned that it's a copy of 1995's "The Usual Suspects" but nevertheless it's still a great plot. Almost everything in this movie is worth complimenting. Great cinematography effects, the music, the acting, etc. Except that the movie was indeed a bit slow at some scenes. Go and watch it in cinema, the film is worth seeing.