Ah Boys to Men 3: Frogmen

There are parts of the movie that are really funny and that's what Jack Neo does best. He would do well in Sitcoms. However, this is a propaganda movie about an elite navy unit in Singapore which focuses a great deal on some aspects of military training. The scenes in between the episodes of comedy and drama, which are quite similar to movies such as I Not Stupid, are long and tedious to watch. There are quite a few times when you think the movie should end here and I had to drag myself to continue to watch it.

If I compare this movie to another military propaganda movie, The Green Berets with John Wayne from 1968, Ah Boys to Men 3 Frogmen fails to build any significant suspense. The various short episodes lack coherence and do little to contribute to a larger story. While there is some character development, it suffers from the lack of a consistent story line. This means that the various characters have little contribution to the conclusion of the movie. In fact, I felt quite happy that the movie was finally over.

Overall, the movie feels like a overly long commercial for the Naval Diving Unit (NDU) which shows it in a very good light. The product placement for companies such as Bread Talk and KPMG, also feels like commercial breaks rather than fitting to the overall story. This is perhaps not surprising that the sponsorship comes clear at the end of the movie when the list of sponsors is presented.

What if, instead of Basic Military School (BMT) in Pulau Tekong, our favourite recruits were selected right from the onset to join the elite Naval Diving Unit (NDU) and underwent a forty-week training course to be frogmen? That, in a nutshell, is how Jack Neo has set up this third instalment of the highest-grossing franchise in local movie history. Cynics who've never loved Jack Neo and his movies will certainly see this as a money-spinner, but 'Ah Boys to Men 3: Frogmen' is a surprisingly entertaining alternate story that stands on its own merits.

Chiefly, the decision not to split this movie into two – which explains its two-and-a-half hour runtime – is a wise one. Skimming over the Boys' requisite BMT training, Neo focuses instead on the land, sand and sea training in the weeks after that is unique to the NDU, including tyre flips, overhead boat push-ups, boat tosses (where a crew of eight men throw the boat into the air and catch it on the way down), flutter kicks (on land and at the beach), drown proofing, capsize drills, fins swimming, sea circuit training and culminating of course in the infamous Hell Week.

Like the first two movies, Neo juxtaposes their transformation within the camp and that outside the camp. For the large part, the characters are pretty much the same as the ones they played in the first two movies. Wang Weiliang's 'L O Bang King' is still the street-smart kid who knows how to make the best of his circumstances – and that means running a small 'minimart' business in camp selling snacks to his platoon mates. As a testament to Weiliang's rising stardom, Neo gives his character much more depth and scope than before – indeed, Weiliang's struggle to support and protect his sister from his drug-addicted mother comes to an unexpectedly emotional conclusion that ties in beautifully with a poignant display of humanity by his superiors, Alex (Tosh Zhang) and No 2 (Justin Dominic Misson).

Joshua Tan's Ken Chow is still struggling with girlfriend issues and looking for ways to 'keng', but (thankfully) there is no sob story here with his father (Richard Low) or for that matter his fastidious mother (Irene Ang). Maxi Lim's Aloysius Jin (or Zeng Xia Lang in Chinese) is still the annoying eager-to-please smart-aleck, but he wisely chooses to underplay than overplay his character's more ingratiating qualities this time round. Tosh's Sergeant Alex Ong remains tough but fair, and a much more nuanced character here in how he responds to Ken's 'chao keng' behaviour vis-à-vis 'Lobang King's' unusual request to book out to attend an urgent family matter late at night. Instead of re- playing the initial hostilities between 'Lobang King' and 'Wayang King', Neo introduces a new character in Hei Long (Wesley Wong), a new citizen from Hong Kong whose triad roots there have propagated into similar ties with the street gangs in Tiong Bahru. Through a series of unfortunate run- ins, Neo builds the conflict between the two that leads to an undeniably mawkish but nonetheless effective confrontation that earns our sympathies for both characters.

As they have demonstrated in the last two movies, the cast are Neo's strongest hand. Weiliang has perfected his 'ah beng' routine of mixing brashness and vulnerability, and proves himself again to be a truly versatile and natural performer. Tosh may be the same age as the recruits he presides over, but he yet again displays a commanding air of authority and an admirable sense of justice. Thrust into a much bigger role here is Misson as the notorious 'trainer from hell' – so convincing is his tough-as-nails getup that we found it hard to distinguish the actor from his character, and that he isn't in fact an SAF regular simply playing the same part in the movie.

Neo's keen eye for casting has occasionally been undermined by his self-indulgent tendencies, but thankfully that's kept to a minimum here. His fascination with modern-day CGI manifests itself only once – and briefly – when 'Lobang King' recounts how he envisioned the NDU's iconic 'frog with wings' statue make a leap into the sky and into the sea when trying to sneak out of camp. He also emphasises the drama rather than the melodrama, in particular the drama between and within the recruits through the weeks of training. His play on common words, phrases and acronyms is at its sharpest in years – and amusing asides like how NDU is abbreviated to be 'Night Delivery Unit' or how 'hum ka chan' actually means humble and garang largely hit the right notes. The structure of the NDU training itself also imposes discipline on his storytelling, and this is probably one of his most coherent and tightly knit films in recent years.

Much as we thought the 'Ah Boys to Men' franchise was done and dusted with a drama series and a musical following the two-part movies, Neo has proved that there is plenty of mileage left in the story of a ragtag group of misfits going through an indelible journey in every Singaporean male's transformation from teenager to young adult. Not just because of its theme, but also because of its treatment, its humour and its drama, we dare say you won't find a more relevant Singaporean film this year.

I really love this movie and the actors all did an amazing job as always and made it seem realistic. But i like that i didn't see more of the "hell week". Don't get me wrong, i do not like to see people suffering. But, from what i know "hell week" is about naval driver trainees having go through tough training and not sleep for 5 days... I see the tough training given to the trainees and things they did, but i wish that the movie could've gone more in depth into the training at night. But anyways, amazing realness felt from the movie. Ah boys to men fighting! I love the plot and the acting by the actors.

now for my praise, the actors acted really well into their respective characters. The plot was also very touching and inspiring. I really hope that Jack Neo would let us see more aspects of the SAF and maybe even do a girl version about it. I am a girl myself, aged 15, i really am interested in joining the SAF in the future, and would really like to see the girls taking charge etc. But, I love the guy actors for ABTM please do not ever change them!