Tian mai zhuan qi

The Touch is Michelle Yeoh's first movie as producer, executive producer and writer (as well as star), and the first movie from her new production company. Now Michelle Yeoh is a smart and sensible woman (and she can kick ass with the best), so expectations for this big budget production with Peter Pau in the director's chair were naturally high - certainly I had high hopes for it. That changed when it came out and it seemed to be universally acclaimed a major disappointment. I almost decided to pass it over completely, but you know sometimes you have to see a certain movie even if you know it's going to be bad, 'cause it's still a 'significant' or 'important' film in some sense.

Thanks to all the negative press, my expectations for the movie were much lower when I sat down to watch it. I mean, we're talking the kind of expectations that make The Blacksheep Affair look like a good film... so it's not really a surprise that I found myself enjoying The Touch. But I mean I found myself *really* enjoying it. A lot!

First with the bad, the reasons people were presumably disappointed. There are some very cheesy moments in places, moments and lines that feel too artificially inserted, too 'script'. There's some bad acting in places - some from the bad guy's goons but most notably from Brandon Chang, who plays Michelle's younger brother (his girlfriend was pretty bad too, but she didn't have as much chance to show it). And most notably there are some really terrible special effects in the final climax - about 15 years out of date

But then with the good! First surprise, it's really funny! Most of the humour comes from the guest Gwei Los Ben Chaplin and Richard Roxburgh, both of whom have really good characters and some brilliant lines. They also break a long tradition of white actors in HK films by being really good, and not at all annoying. Richard Roxburgh's villain in particular is a charismatic classic. Then there's the story, which is all quite cheesy but reasonably involved and well developed. It's a good old fashioned adventure yarn. And then there's the production values... especially the great sets and locations filmed beautifully by Peter Pau. The soundtrack is really good too, though it sounds very Hollywood (I'm not normally a fan of Hollywood's overblown and generally forgettable soundtracks, but I like this one).

It must be said that The Touch does in many ways feel more like a Hollywood movie than a Hong Kong movie - the fact that it is 95% filmed in English undoubtedly being part of it. Hong Kong film makers normally fail miserably when they attempt to make a Hollywood style movie, but I think that this case represents a near success. If it weren't for those dreadful special effects I think it would have a very good chance of competing on the Hollywood distribution circuits. And I believe the production company have taken the unusual step of hiring a different firm (the normally excellent Centro) to completely redo the special effects for a US release. This may be one case where the US version of a HK movie actually improves on the original.

One thing that is expected of a Hong Kong movie starring Michelle Yeoh is obviously a high calibre of action. This is perhaps where the movie disappoints, as there isn't as much action in the film as I expect most viewers would have liked. There are a couple of fight scenes that show off Michelle's skills well, but Philip Kwok's choreography isn't all that exciting unfortunately. Not bad, but not up to the standard of Michelle's fights in Royal Warriors, for example. Especially disappointing is the final climax, which should have been a raw bone crunching showcase of martial arts prowess but is in fact a limp showcase of terrible CGI. Bad call to go the special effects route, Michelle!

If I hadn't had my expectations lowered by those who saw the movie before me, I guess there's a fair chance I'd have ended up disappointed in The Touch too. Because I wasn't expecting too much I found much more to enjoy than I bargained for. In fact, I'd say I enjoyed the movie more than any other 2002 Hong Kong movie I can think of (not saying much admittedly, since 2002 was a terrible year for HK movies). It's a movie I will happily watch again (though I'll wait for the US release perhaps) and have no hesitation recommending to others.

I just saw The Touch at a theater here in China. That movie is fantastic !! Michelle Yeoh is great, amazingly charismatic, beautiful, and a remarkable martial artist. Ben Chaplin is great too, really at ease and perfectly believable. the movie itself is an amazing adventure flick, very funny by moments, and with an intense ending. Don't miss it, really !

My name is Jo. I live in BKK. I've already seen the movie here in Thailand and I think it's great especially the Tibetan part. I'd say well done to Michelle Yeoh because she has done such a good job. I'm impressed. Keep on going, Michelle! We love you. This is a greeting from your fans in Thailand. " JO & FRIENDS "

One of the classic fantasy quest novels of ancient China serves as the basis for this film's story: JOURNEY TO THE WEST by Wu Cheng En. In it, the Buddhist Monk/Scholar Xuanzang accomplishes a pilgrimage to India with the help of three magical creatures: a powerful immortal monkey with an anti-authoritarian streak, a humanoid boar of immense power, gullibility and appetite and an even-tempered warrior monk. The same source material was the inspiration for anime like Dragonball Z.

In this case, The Touch starts off cleverly, and sort of creates the impression that it is a latter-day sequel to the novel especially in one of the fights that opens the movie: a re-creation of the famous scene in the novel where the Monkey duels with a hot-tempered Boy-God with the ability to manipulate fire. And with the fact that it is the Sharira (or crystal essence) of the Monk that is the motive for all the characters' actions. But it fails to cover this much further, sags in the middle and soon becomes a cliched and predictable adventure film featuring a booby-trapped room, fire, Tarzan-swinging and "leaps of faith".

Performances wise Michelle Yeoh is Michelle Yeoh, always up to snuff in her physical stunts and emotional nuances but set back by her grating Cantonese-Malayan inflections when speaking Mandarin and English. Ben Chaplin continues his trend of playing second fiddle to A-list females, from Winona Ryder, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman to Michelle Yeoh. He's just the kind of guy A-list women like to have in their movies because he looks positively impotent. Richard Roxburgh seems to have walked in thinking he was going to act in a Shakespearean stage play and pretty much plays his stock villain character larger-than-life with hammy delivery.

Cinematography is first-rate, and the music is surprisingly pleasing, and that's about all. The story is weak, predictable and has the depth of a Disney cartoon. Characters are one-dimensional and stock. Peter Pau can handle visuals though what he's done is virtually retreading old ground, but as a director he still lacks vision and the ability to astonish emotionally. Any astonishment is mainly from the way he handles visuals, rarely from timing or the way he works on the imagination. A triumph of set design over plot this is, but what set design, and what cinematography!

Overall this movie is an elegantly-shot with potential for greatness, but just becomes little more than a passably entertaining, shortchanging adventure by the end.

Rating: 5.6 out of 10

After TOMORROW NEVER DIES Michelle Yeoh was on top of the world. But instead of continuing her Hollywood career (which knowing Hollywood would have been restricted to very stereotypical Asian woman roles anyway), she began her own new production company and launched THE TOUCH, an Indiana Jones like caper, as her first picture. International distributors lined up around the block to get dibs on this hot property, shot mostly in English to get that international angle. But what was finally released was poorly paced by director Peter Pau, who seems unable to bring energy to a scene to save his life, and saddled with the worst CGI effects I have seen in any movie in a long, long time. The retro-oriental adventure concerns a map which reveals the location of some magic Tibetan artifact which looks like a glowing snow-cone, and retrieval of the artifact by Yeoh's family of acrobats, specially trained through many generations for that purpose. Hint to the filmmakers: When making a movie about a band of acrobats, please cast people who can actually do a little acrobatics. Instead, we have the likes of newcomer Brandon Chang, who not only does not seem capable of a somersault, is a terrible actor to boot. Ben Chaplin is Yeoh's love interest, and Richard Roxburgh is the British bad guy. Although improving the CGI won't improve the bad acting and plodding direction, maybe it would fix the climactic ending, in which fire, stone, rope, and bodies in motion all absolutely refused to obey any known laws of physics. Michelle Yeoh deserves better than starring in her own vanity pictures.