Divergence

I loved this movie!! I originally wanted to see it because I am a big Benny Chan fan. Remember Heroic Duo and Gen X Cop? I thought they were awesome and so I thought I would check this one out too.

The movie is basically about three guys. Suen, an obsessive, manic, rundown cop, who cannot get over his girlfriend's sudden disappearance, which happened over 10 years ago. An assassin, who we meet in the beginning of the movie when he murders the guy chained to Seun and who seems to posses secret important info. And, the lawyer. a man who can get off any client, regardless of his crime, and who coincidentally happens to be married to a woman who looks exactly like Sean's missing girlfriend - which really messes with Sean! Anyway, this was one of those movies where I could not guess how it was going to end, and that is huge to me. It was so complex! All of the characters were so well developed, with such strong personalities that it made for a really intense dramatic, thriller, mystery, movie experience. The whole time I was trying to figure out where everything was going and I couldn't! So many films these days are so ridiculously obvious and formulaic, which is why I think it's important to step out of the mainstream on occasion. This movie is a great opportunity to do that!

The movie Divergence is about three men who have their lives brought together by their jobs. The movie makes it seem like there will be some very profound and mind-blowing brilliant connection among these characters when there really isn't. However the movie does create an interesting dynamic with the jobs of the three main characters, and how each character takes on the job of another (I won't spoil it for you). The characters have a good amount of development and its likely you'll make some sort of connection with Aaron Kwok's character at the very least. The action scenes are good, definitely better than the usual fare from HK recently. The cinematography of the movie really impressed me, if you pay attention there are a lot of subtle things that are done to foreshadow things in the movie. The director really knew what he was doing. The rating that the movie has right now (floating around 5.5) is definitely too low, this is an entertaining movie and impressed me since I have been a little indifferent to HK cinema recently. At the very least the this movie shows their is still room for the thriller movies in HK, despite the recent barrage of brainless comedy flicks.

Messy form over content police thriller (comedy?) has a cop, who is trying to come to terms with a long missing girlfriend, lose a witness in an organized crime case to an assassin. How the cop, the girlfriend and the assassins all interrelate is the film. I didn't know whether director Benny Chan was serious or not. Chan a good director (New Police Story) for the most part though occasionally he tries to do too much and the pieces don't come together (Rob B Hood). Here nothing seems to work and it all seems like a TV movie. The action isn't real, its done for artistic effect- the early strangulation where the victim claws the paint of the truck for example.Whats worse its laughable- the sequence where our hero finds the picture of his lost girl in his car and takes his foot off the brake while on a steep incline had me howling. Actually I just gave up on the film and jumped to the end. For me its one of the real disappointments I've seen recently, even if it does have a couple of good sequences-the plastic bag fight for example.

Divergence tells the story of three men: A reckless hit-man simply named Coke (Daniel Wu), Suen Siu-yan a police officer whose fiancée has been missing for 10 years (Aaron Kwok), and Barrister To, a lawyer (Ekin Cheng) who works for a mobster. While conducting a routine witness transfer Suen Siu-yan feels the wrath of the hit-man Coke, after barely escaping with his life he starts further investigation into the case, the prize being Barrister To's gangster boss. At this point, three seemingly unrelated lives converge into a hailstorm of bullets and bloodshed.

If it sounds like typical Hong Kong action flick thats because it is. Everything about this film, at a cursory glance, is typical. The Acting is well-done, and the cinematography and Direction is also good, and the action is good too. But there is still something lacking in Divergence. I had to watch this film twice to figure out what was missing. On the second viewing I figured it out. This movie has no heart. It has everything that makes a good action film but in the end, you just don't care about the characters. The film makes all the stops and covers all the bases, and it should be a great film. But sadly, it's not, I was hoping for a great gunkata thriller but I was sadly disappointed.

Not the slam bang police action of Infernal Affairs (the original, not the ripoff), but there is enough action to make it worth your while.

It focuses more on the characters and their relationships: the cop, Suen Siu Yan (Aaron Kwok, the hit man, Koo (Daniel Wu), and the lawyer, To Hou Sun (Ekin Cheng).

Suen has been looking for his girlfriend Amy for 10 years. To's wife Su Fong (Angelica Lee) looks like her and actually plays two parts, one in flashback. He acts like a stalker as he follows her everywhere.

Eric Tsang from Internal Affairs is here, but he is a cop in Missing Persons, not a mobster.

Kwok and Wu are great, and the action is good at times, but there just doesn't seem to be something that brings it all together.