Huong Ga

I must admit that I had expected quite a bit more of entertainment from the 2014 Vietname movie "Rise" (aka "Huong Ga"). Sure, I hadn't even heard about it prior to sitting down to watch it here in 2021. But I read the synopsis for the movie and found it to be sounding interesting. So of course I gave the movie a chance.

And it turns out that "Rise" was an unfathomably slow paced movie with a storyline that held little appeal to me. And I must admit that I was growing more and more bored with the movie up to the point where I got up and turned it off at 45 minutes into the ordeal. I just couldn't sit through the movie any longer at that point, as it felt like director Cuong Ngo was just making things up as the movie was filmed. It all felt way too cluttered and random.

I will say that the the acting by lead actress Truong Ngoc Anh was actually okay, though she could only do so much to salvage the movie given its lack of interesting script and storyline.

And the fact that the characters in the movie had the broad appeal of wet cardboard just didn't help to sell the movie either. I mean, the characters in the movie were just lacking distinctive personalities, quirks and such. They all just felt mundane and bland, with little to offer the audience, much less contribute to an otherwise stale storyline.

"Rise" was a swing and a miss, and writers Minh Ngoc Nguyen and Dinh Tu Nguyen just failed to deliver a script that had much of any appeal.

My rating of "Rise" lands on a mere three out of ten stars. This movie was definitely in my liking. And I can honestly say that I have no interest in returning to watch the rest of the movie at any time, as it just failed to capture my interest.

I may got the wrong impression on Truong Ngoc Anh after the lackluster Tracer (2016) but with Rise (2014) her first time debut as an action movie star despite being not that good to beginning with and only slighty better than Tracer after 30 minutes into the movie I believe that with enough practicing she can be the next Veronica Ngo in the future. The movie definitely fell flat especially in the action after I witnessing the greatest Vietnamese action movie in the past decade Furie (2019) but Rise still entertain me to a certain degree for how much the movie played out like a lost 90s chessy triad movie.Truong Ngoc Anh is the best thing that ever happenned to this movie so I hope she find her luck in Abduction (2019) when she fighting alongside with Andy On and Scott Adkins