Blast

I really enjoyed most of the action flicks that director Benny Chan made in collaboration with martial arts icon Jackie Chan. For what it's worth, these unrelated Chans made a whole bunch of unpretentious and adrenalin-rushing popcorn movies that generally feature an ultra-thin plot but an overload of spectacular stunts and marvelously choreographed fighting sequences. The ultimate highlight of both their careers – according to yours truly at least – is the 2004 revision of the 80's franchise "Police Story". That film, simply entitled "New Police Story", is a downright awesome must-see in case you like your heroes invincible, your criminals pure evil and your action rough & explicit. I haven't followed Benny Chan's work since "New Police Story" but, browsing through his personal page on this lovely site, it seems like he reliably delivered a new movie practically each year. His 2010 accomplishment "City under Siege" played at this year's edition of the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Films and looked as if it had more than enough potential to become a crowd-pleaser. And yes, undoubtedly this could have been a real highlight this year if it weren't for the fact that the film is hopelessly overlong, tedious and repetitive. I'm very aware of the fact that Asian action movies are usually longer than necessary, but this one really pushed the edges of my tolerance level, what with its redundant sub plots, pointless melodrama and fighting sequences that more than outstayed their welcome! The rudimentary plot of "City under Siege" is nonetheless straightforward and full of great potential. A group of traveling circus artists stumble upon a cavern that used to serve as a secret military lab for unorthodox experiments during WWII. They inhale gas fumes and almost instantaneously notice their bodies mutating. They grow strengths and physical capacities that make them superhuman. Sunny, the geek and laughing stock of the bunch, uses his new gained powers for good causes, but the rest of them – who were pretty obnoxious and egocentric to begin with – can't resist the wide range of evil capacities and subject the whole city to a reign of terror. It's up to Sunny, together with a sexy news reporter and a romantically involved couple of police investigators, to stop them. Thus, simply put, "City under Siege" is somewhat the Asian take on "X-men" and a variety of other superhero movies, except of course that this isn't based on a Marvel comic book and that it – most unfortunately - features sugary sweet romance and melodrama. This would have been a really cool and ultimately amusing film, if only Chan & C° had cut approximately 30 minutes of all the redundant padding footage. I'm honestly not talking about vital plot information, but merely the romantic interludes, the detailed analysis of literally every single insignificant supportive character and also even 2-3 minutes of each physical duel (even though they're impressively staged). The production clearly didn't tighten the budget-belt, however. There's a massive amount of explosions, car crashes, buildings and interiors of apartments getting demolished and that sort of frolics. The flamboyant and often extremely OTT make-up effects weren't cheap, neither, I imagine. Worth a look if you like cheesy, light-headed fantasy flicks and an absolute must-see in case you are, for some incomprehensible reason, a fan of sappy romance intermixed with violent kung-fu.

So cheesy and cliché that it is actually funny...

It's been a while, since I actually had fun watching cheesy and cliché humour. The latest Benny Chan's sci-fi action extravagant, City Under Siege is an outright cheesy movie that one can either enjoy or doss with respite. Aaron is on the back of a string quality acting roles, returns to his former self as the poster boy of expensive action displays. Not unlike, 2000AD and his 90s antics, Kwok plays a rather simple and empty character that aims to deliver the cheesiest lines in HK cinema. A prime example will be the moment that Kwok starts to woo Shu Qi on screen, out goes the background music sang by Kwok. It reminded me of the days when Kwok used to woo Kelly Chen in too many 90s rom-com. Still, I burst out laughing in the middle of the cinema. Embarrassed, may be a little, but shameless I was. By the time, the film credits were rolling rigorously, I have already laughed out due to extreme cheesiness a hand full of time. Is the film bad? Probably, but the unintentional humour brought a cheesy taste within my tongue.

Aaron Kwok kicks of the title of the most hideous laughing clowns in town. He is a genuine, laid back and simple-minded person who aims and strives to take the stage and throw some knifes. In fact, that is his lifelong goal. Mr. Colin Chou overacts immensely over-the-top and the result is a performance that is both hilariously bad and also his funniest role of his career. Shu Qi is still pretty enough to justify an eye candy presence, despite being overhaul by a rookie newsreader (played by Chrissie Chau) due to having a bigger pair of candies. Still, Kwok and Qi lack chemistry, but due to the nature of the movie, it leads to further funnier moments. On the other hand, Zhang Jin Chu continues to still the show in a sympathetic performance and martial artist Wu Jing shows that he is superhuman without being a mutant. In fact, one can highlight the somewhat anticipated fight scene between Jing and Chou, but the fury pacing ruins any sort of enjoyment in that scenario.

All in all, City Under Siege is a highly uneven, cliché, weird, corny and insert any other synonym of cheesy kind of movie. Yet somehow, it manages to be funny and somewhat enjoyable to endure. Director Benny Chan is well known for creating expensive action blockbusters. In City, he manages to be loud, routine and offers nothing special. It is a kind of film that one can easily be turned off, but luckily, for whatever reason, I find this film unintentionally funny in both a good and a bad way...(Neo 2010)

I rate it 6/10

• www.thehkneo.com

Oriental films I love horror films, action as I'm not a fan, there's no involvement, this one even has a cute mutant story, but it didn't infect me ...

A group of circus performers are accidentally exposed to Japanese biochemicals from the World War II when looking for gold, and rapidly become super-strong but horribly disfigured mutants... all except for simpleton wannabe knife thrower Sunny (Aaron Kwok), who gets the strength without the hideousness due to... some reason or other.

The ugly mutants go on a rampage in Hong Kong, using their super-strength to rob, murder and generally get up to mischief, whilst after a brief spell being horribly fat, young Sunny becomes a have-a-go hero and strikes up a relationship with beautiful reporter Angel (Shu Qi).

It takes a special kind of person to watch Black Mask 2 and conclude "the world needs more films like that!", or to think "Terence Yin is an actor", or indeed to think "Benny Chan is a talented writer and director". I really can't imagine who would believe the latter, other than Benny himself, but he does keep getting quite large budgets to work with so unless his rich grandmother is financing them I guess he's somehow managed to convince others of it. To be fair, his films have mostly been successful - though largely due to Jackie Chan apparently being one of those who believe in Benny's ability enough to submit to his direction on multiple occasions.

City Under Siege, or as it's called in the UK "Assassin: City Under Siege" (for absolutely no discernible reason - perhaps somebody's brain melted after watching the film, and they decided that randomly following words and concepts after each other was the new normal) is truly a bad film. It's terribly written, terribly directed, and for the most part terribly acted. Things start off full of cheese and poorly plotted, and just get worse from there. By the end there's barely a scene goes by without invoking responses of "Why are they doing that?", "What were they trying to achieve?", "Didn't they think this through for even a moment?" and "wow, that was some really poor acting right there". Poor Aaron Kwok, who has worked diligently to develop some degree of respectability as an actor despite all the early evidence that it was not a talent that came naturally to him, seems to have regressed 20 years overnight, or is just woefully miscast and mishandled. This is probably his worst ever performance. Shu Qi, another one who struggled to achieve credibility after debuting and being summarily dismissed as a ditzy airhead only fit for soft porn roles, also flounders in a role that to be fair gives her precious little to work with. Ngai Sing, who generally fares well enough when he's used properly - i.e. required to look somewhat stoic and serious and kick somebody's ass - is the worst victim of miscasting and a director who can't handle his actors. His overacting becomes truly painful to watch as more and more layers of latex and makeup are applied to his mutating body, until you just feel pity for the guy.

The only cast members who come off at all well are Wu Jing and Zhang Jing-Chu, who perhaps benefit from being allowed to speak Mandarin or something. They are the only cast members who seem to fit their characters, and get a few (a very few) scenes where there seems to be some plausibility in their characters and emotions. Oh, and they get to kick plenty of ass.

The one thing that Benny Chan does unquestionably know how to do is stage some big action set pieces, and this is where City Under Siege scores a few points. Having Ngai Sing & Wu Jing go toe to toe is clearly a good idea, as that is what they are good at. The super-strong mutant angle gives the choreographers Ma Yuk Sing and Nicky Li a good excuse to show off their wirework, but they also remember to have some more grounded action where the performers get to show off their skills. The staging of the fights is quite imaginative and dramatic, though I couldn't fully enjoy the final showdown in and around traffic because I couldn't stop thinking "Why the hell are people still driving along normally when all this is going on around them?", largely because by that point I'd decided that the most fun that could be extracted from the film was probably by going into snarky critic mode and picking it to pieces... a task which, unfortunately, offers absolutely no challenge.

Oddly, bad as it is, watching City Under Siege has had the entirely unexpected effect of making me want to watch Black Mask 2 again... probably just to remind myself how bad it is, and to confirm that CUS is not quite _that_ bad. Perhaps it's just the timely reminder that you have to watch something truly dreadful every so often to remind yourself that overall, most films aren't really that bad.

If you LOVE lots of exposition with "Characters" trying to define themselves through talk and slow, sloppy action sequences and long drawn out everything, by all means rush to see this. Much was made of the stunts by people involved in THE MATRIX but that also had an editor, a script writer and other professionals doing a good job. This piece makes any Russ Meyer pic look like Eugene O'neill. I kept trying to find something to like about it but finally left during what I hope was the last sloppy set piece. It's like a public access cable station spoof of the kind of dreck that used to be on Saturday afternoons when no one who had legs would watch. This is really awful without anything to commend it.