Love Battlefield

Director P. S. Cheang is certainly one of the best new talents in Hong Kong!

In "Love Battlefield" (Ai zuozhan), Cheang skillfully adapted the requirement of the mainland China market and the strength of Hong Kong movies and turned the "Love Battlefield" into a wonderful crossover romantic story and thriller.

In the first half an hour, Yui (Eason Chan) and Ching (Niki Chow) had showed us just another ordinary lover relationship of city kidults. They love, they fight and they hate because of minor things.

Then, their car was stolen by robbers and Yui was kidnapped. That put their life upside down.

The robber couple Wah (Wang zhiwen) and his wife (Qin hailu) is a sharp contrast to the city couple. They have to struggle to survive. After this incident, Yui and Ching learned what to be treasured.

P.S. Cheang's old films are all ghost stories. In his films, the ghosts are always irrational and innocent people suffers. This violates the tradition of Hong Kong ghosts stories, which used to offer a 'reason' for the thing. (Let's compare it with "The Eye" & "Three") In "Love Battlefield", those robbers just behaved like P.S. Cheang's old ghosts.

For the people who love thrillers genre or romance genre, they might find it isn't their cup of tea. But for people who are looking for something new. It certainly the movie that had to see. It brings out the best of the 2 genres.

Niki Chow's performance has a breakthrough! She gave her best to the audience. Under the direction of Cheang, she is not a doll anymore, but someone that can act. Eason Chan's performance is beyond his average too. Graduated from mainland art schools, mainland Chinese actors Wang Zhiwen and Qin hailu's acting is something different from Hong Kong's style.

And last but not the least, the writing credit is a mistake. Joe Ma didn't write this story. He's the producer, and it's K. Y. Szeto who wrote this wonderful story.

Needless to say that with my love and admiration of the Hong Kong cinema, then of course I had to sit downd and watch the 2004 movie "Ai Zuo Zhan" (aka "Love Battlefield"), as I had the opportunity to do so here in 2023.

Writers Wai-Lun Ng and Kam-Yuen Szeto put together a fair enough storyline and script for the movie, though the pacing of the narrative was a little bit like a roller coaster, up and down throughout the course of the 96 minutes that the movie ran for. However, I found the story to be entertaining, and that is the purpose of movies, so that was a good accomplishment from the writers.

I watch a lot of Hong Kong movies, but I was only familiar with leading actor Eason Chan in this movie. And while he did carry the movie well enough, it was far from being one of his better performances in his career. The cast ensemble in "Ai Zuo Zhan" was good, and the actors and actresses put on fair performances in general.

While "Ai Zuo Zhan" certainly was watchable, it was hardly a movie that had enough contents to the script and storyline to support more than a single viewing. And I doubt that I will ever be returning to watch it a second time.

My rating of director Soi Cheang's 2004 movie "Ai Zuo Zhan" lands on a five out of ten stars.