Baak nin ho hap

How the mighty insist on falling. We've already lamented Johnnie To's decision to direct energies more towards the brainless end of the comedy scale as opposed to significant pictures like those famous for making him a benchmark artist (see Fulltime Killer, Running Out of Time and The Mission).

In a wild gambit, To and cohort Wai Kai Fai have produced yet more of the same with a comedy standing out mostly by not standing out at all. And if that last sentence seems meaningless, so will the movie. Playing precariously on pre-conceived stigmas, the film depicts a stereotypical HK rich playboy (Gu Tian Le) visiting Sichuan's fabled E Mei mountain in search of healing. At a rustic monastery he hooks up with wide-eyed, amiable mainland hick Wang Feng (Sammi Cheng). The latter not only boasts flaming rosy cheeks, but also prodigious amounts of swordplay. How surprising. Not.

While Miss Wang puts him through the grinder, the socialite soon recovers and heads home, entourage in tow. As fate would have it, Wang Feng quickly feels in need of some reciprocity: following a challenge from her senior, she must perfect a technique calling for the user's heart to be broken, and who better in achieving that than a guy giving Nicholas Tse whole marathons for his money? Once again into the fray, this time in HK proper. As the dashing womanizer crashes Ferraris around town and continues his skirt-chasing habits, our naïve mainland friend falls madly in love with him, impervious to all of his unscrupulous tricks. Even his evil girlfriend can't break Wang Feng's sturdy heart.

Gu Tian Le's ambiguous performance (we're not supposed to know whether he's sincere in hurting her or not) doesn't fly, you'll be hard pressed to even care. Sammi, while as likable as ever, stops short of salvaging this subpar experience. Devoid of any truly memorable laughs and pervaded by an air of ho-hum mediocrity, Johnnie To's latest is about as exciting as all-season antifreeze, no offense intended. There's so much room for brilliant, enlightening comedy in today's film industry, one can't help but question what motivates an accomplished craftsman such as To in his continuing parade of shambles. Here's to a swift recovery!

Rating: * *

Silly but kind of oddly sweet, this is typical lightweight romantic comedy that HK loves to make. It is also the type of film that Sammi Cheng seems most comfortable with-- playing the goofy, misfit who stumbles along an offbeat path to love. In this case, she is highly skilled but unworldly herbal healer and martial arts expert. The twist here is that she (May) must learn to love and feel its loss to achieve mastery in kung fu so that she can save the Omei temple from its former leader and her deadly intentions.

After curing Tiger, May realizes that he is the perfect man to "love her and leave her" and give her the power to defeat her foe. Grateful for the cure, Tiger agrees with her offbeat plan. But, as always, the best laid plans have an uncanny ability to go awry and what starts out as a simple, not-strings-attached agreement becomes more complicated that either bargained for.

Misfits are Sammi's strong suit and she is able to pull it all off from her naive/socially inept healer through her transformation to worldly woman with a kind of kooky charm. Koo's role isn't much of a stretch for him and he has played it many times before and since. But, together they do make a reasonably good odd-ball team.

On the whole, rather pleasant, lightweight fare with a couple of rather humorous scenes-- such as Sammi's dinner with the family. Not a continuous stream of belly laughs, but oddly sweet in its way.

The first time I watched this movie, I didn't think too much of the plot because I was looking for laughter during the Chinese New Years. Now that I have more time to watch it once again with my DVD and digest this movie. I found it is not only entertaining, it also provokes a lot of thoughts from me. First of all, I would like to comment on Alan's critic of this movie. He must be watching the mandarin version instead of the Hong Kong version. The fact that Sammi's character used a different name in China and H.K. tells us which version one is watching. The China version is a little bit different as compared to the H.K. version. The H.K. version is more slick, and fast pace. Yes, we do not know when Louis Koo's character is supposed to fall in love with Sammi or he just tried to help her to achieve the "hurt" feeling. Well, neither is the main character himself. That's the beauty of this movie, even the character itself do not know he fell in love with the kungfu master (Sammi), he thought he was helping to "hurt" the feeling, yet he subconsciously did something without himself realizing that he indeed has fallen in love. Isn't it that's what Love is all about.

i recommended this movie mainly because it is funny. Furthermore, the breath taking scenery of the Omai Mountain in Szechun, China is a gem. It sure worth the price of the DVD.