Tian ji: Fu chun shan ju tu

We had seen the movie as a preview of another movie we had watched, and the trailer looked quite good and it was partially shot in Dubai as well.

Sadly the movie is a total disaster.

Director Jay Sun should be prohibited to make any other movies. The story is incomplete told, scenes and locations are changing permanently without being explained properly.

The dubbing of the original Chinese movie to English was so bad that i felt after 10 minutes already the will to leave the cinema. A lot of other people did that. It was somehow like a Mission Impossible in bad, despite having fancy gadgets in the movie and a lot of Nokia phones and Audi cars (sorry you should have chosen another movie for your product placement) the movie never really went good. Even the end is not logic and not explained well.

I do honestly not understand how a scrappy movie like this got released at all. The CGI effects specially when the car is hanging on a helicopter and thrown into the Atlantis the Palm Hotel it looks just horrible.

Resume: Don't waste 2 hours of your life with this movie. It is 100% not worth it and the Reel Cinemas should take the movie of the list and refund the money to the people who went to see it.

There is nothing worth to say about this movie, except, don't waste your precious time, not even when you could do it with a fast forward button.

Our movie channel just put it on the shelf for on-demand playing, and after hearing so much bad comments about it when it was on the big screen, I made it a challenge for myself to try to sit through it.

EPIC FAIL.

To the extent that you want to find a way to unsee it, but then you simply can't, because the visuals throughout were so colourful, or even rich, BUT WITHOUT A POINT.

I really wanted to give it -10.

Someone steals an ancient Chinese painting from a museum in a high tech operation. It's actually only half of a painting. Long time ago it was cut in half and in a couple of days for the first time there will be an exhibition presenting the complete painting with both halves.

A bunch of Westerners are after the stolen part and some lady known as the Empress, as well as some gentle soft-spoken Japanese mean guy. Xiao is part of some government outfit and he's tasked with recovering the stolen painting. He's married, has a son, but his job as secret agent requires him to be a ladies man. Sure enough, all the girls in this movie are after him for some reason.

When the sale of the painting is about to take place, Xiao recovers it. But the Japanese guy kidnaps his son in exchange for the painting. But Xiao and his team won't rest until both halves of the painting are safe in time for the exhibition.

The story of Switch sounds straight-forward enough but the way it's told is a complete mess. While I'm sure the director is not entirely blameless, the main problem here is the bizarre editing. The entire movie comes across as fragmentary. Every "scene" lasts only a few seconds and then is faded out as we rotate between all the characters in this movie and no point is ever made. There is very little dialogue and very little action. Instead what Switch is all about is empty style. The actors wonder in and out of fancy luxurious LED-lit interiors and a few exteriors in China and Dubai without doing or saying much. Even the main character Xiao doesn't do much but drive around in a certain brand of vehicles and for a good part of the movie we don't even see him, making it a movie without much of a main character. Without trying to sound stereotypical, I had a very hard time distinguishing among the female characters. I think I could identify maybe 4 of them--the wife, some overwatch girl, Xiao's main squeeze when he's undercover, and a girl who likes him but works for the Japanese guy. But I may be wrong. That said, all the girls are beautiful.

I'm surprised this movie got international distribution. Despite the budget and excessive opulence, it doesn't have a whole lot going for it. It's not a thrilling movie, it's not an action movie, there's some drama, and CGI scenes look rather cheesy. The movie even engages in some political polemics. It makes the Japanese look pretty bad and it features a hilarious song with some very politically incorrect lyrics that make a mockery of Western "values." What it does have going for it is some of the scenery. Sound is surprisingly very well done. The Japanese guy is surrounded by Cirque-du-Soleil-type acrobats who are also killers. And in the end we get a scene were all these girls confront one of Xiao's girls, don't know which one. That's a cool fighting scene. But for all the fancy sets, the final two confrontations takes place in some really lame settings. The end is also somewhat puzzling.

Switch; a flashy big budget modern day Chinese action flick starring Andy Lau that has a rating of 2 out of 10 stars on IMDb?...That rating can't be accurate, can it?...YES!...YES IT CAN!

It's really hard to believe how astonishingly bad this movie actually is unless you watch it yourself (which I'm not suggesting you do). But, check it out if you want a master lesson on bad filmmaking. Everyone involved with this production should be ashamed of themselves, and the director of this turd should be forever barred from filmmaking in the future.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Basic Story: various nefarious Chinese, British, and Japanese groups are all trying to get their hands on two halves of some ancient priceless Chinese scroll. Andy Lau plays a Chinese super-agent who's in charge of protecting the scroll, as is his "estranged" wife. They go about their business to try and save the day while perhaps falling back in love with each other along the way.

There are so many things wrong with this film that I don't even know where to start, so in the spirit of how this movie was made, I'll just rattle off some random incoherent thoughts as they come to me, and call it a day:

1. Nothing makes any sense; don't bother trying to determine who wants to obtain/protect the scroll and for what reasons. It's pointless and disjointed storytelling that involves lots of fake plots, fake scrolls, fake deaths, etc.

2. The writing, script, and dialogue are all beyond TERRIBLE! Nothing was lost in translation either.

3. The direction and editing are both epically bad. Watch Andy repel from the roof, then race across the desert, now pause for a moment to spend some time reflecting on himself in some Buddhist like swamp where he befriends a little girl for some reason. OK, enough of that; let's have another gun fight, car chase, etc.

4. The love triangle. Perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention in the beginning, but the two leads are apparently still married to, and still love, each other...could've fooled me though because Andy makes for one of the worst husbands and fathers in the history of cinema; he spends his time brazenly flirting and fooling around with any piece of hot tail he comes across (particularly the main evil "henchwoman" who's in love with him) while he completely ignores his wife and child. I guess the point is Andy is eventually supposed to reconcile his love for his family vs. his love for the main hot bad girl, but, there is little reason to care about what he does in regards. I have never in my life seen a more poorly written and incoherently executed love triangle in any movie from any country in any genre!

5. Clichés, clichés, clichés; there's plenty of fat dumb obnoxious white guys, hot female Chinese assassins on roller skates/dangling from ceilings/on jet skis in wedding dresses, etc. Let's not forget the Yakuza, the evil deformed mastermind, secret motives by everyone involved, the ludicrous backstories, etc... This movie features every conceivable overused cliché you could possibly expect from an "Asian" film and then some!

6. I could go on, but why bother?....no one involved with this production seemed to give a sh*t about their work, so why should I?

On the plus side: Hmmmm. Well, this movie is often actually pretty to just "look at" if you aren't paying attention to the story or dialogue or acting; it does make for some great visuals & screenshots here and there. It's also good for numerous unintentional laughs, some pretty girls, and, it might reach legendary cult status one day for how bad it actually is. Other than that, this is easily the worst cinematic venture I've seen this year (2013), and there's not even a close second I can compare it to.

Bottom Line: I DARE YOU TO WATCH THIS POS!

1 star out of 10, and, that ain't no joke! It's quite possibly the worst movie ever made (particularly so when you factor in budget, actors/actresses involved, the modern global era we live in, etc)!

There is literally no point to this movie! It's just product placement after product placement. I am not exaggerating. There's no cohesive story that I can see other than there is a coveted painting, the script is laughable, amateur, and melodramatic and the characters are caricatures. I started to wonder if it was based off manga, and when a kid started laughing maniacally in front of a fire, I knew this movie was ****, and it's not a case of not understanding the movie because it's too deep either. It really is just about the aesthetics, and if this movie has any stars, that's why. This was really disappointing! Andy Lau, you've sunk low!