"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, June 17, 2017

A Little TLC(w): Fighting for Love (2001)

This rom-com was made around the same time that Tony Leung Chiu-wai made Love Me, Love My Money, and the opening scene of the leads in their cars talking on the phone, demonstrating what a-holes they could be, made me worry that Fighting for Love was going to be more of the same.  Fortunately, this movie is much better – again, I’m not much of a rom-com person in general, but I’d say this one is middling and unoffensive, elevated by its lead actors into something pretty decent (a few spoilers.)

Tung-choi and Deborah have the opposite of a meet-cute.  Tung-choi, a wealthy restaurateur running his family’s business, and Deborah, an ambitiously-cutthroat business woman, get into a minor road rage match when both are haphazardly driving relatives to the hospital.  Their attempt at an olive branch leads to a drunken one-night-stand, an issue for Tung-choi, who has a celebrity girlfriend.  However, said girlfriend going out of town coincides neatly with Tung-choi running into Deborah again just as she finds herself in a hard spot, and he offers to help out.  Soon, the two are becoming friends, and maybe more, as they get a glimpse behind one another’s walls.

Even though it’s a fairly standard love/hate pairing mixed with a love triangle featuring a bitchy girlfriend, the movie’s setup is pretty convoluted.  It takes a while to get going, and even with those familiar elements in place, it felt really messy to me at first.  That, the really over-the-top side characters (oh my gosh, Tung-choi’s family is cranked up to eleven at least 80% of the time,) and the extreme “evil” of Tung-choi’s girlfriend are the film’s biggest downfalls, but once it starts letting Deborah and Tung-choi edge toward friendship, it settles down into something that I’d say is pretty watchable if a little trite.

I appreciate that neither Tung-choi nor Deborah are as abrasive as they are in the first ten minutes.  Rather than being unrepentant assholes that deserve each other, both are basically decent people who go on the offensive when they feel stressed:  with Deborah arming the battle stations for a hugely-precarious development at work and Tung-choi worrying about his sick mom amid his insane family, their fender-bender upon meeting creates a perfect storm to bring out the worst in each other.  Both continue to use sarcasm as a defense mechanism for their insecurities, especially Deborah, but when they’re in a good place mentally and emotionally, both can be playful, supportive, and caring, and you can see why they could make a genuinely good match.

Tung-choi is a much more likeable character for Leung to play than Richard from Love Me, Love My Money – not a particularly big stretch of his skills, of course, but Tung-choi is both charming and flawed, making for a pretty rootable rom-com lead.  He has a sly sense of humor, a short fuse that burns out almost as quickly as it ignites, and, like a number of Leung’s comedic roles, an eye for scheming; he comes up with a laughably-amusing solution to a crisis at his restaurant, and he rolls with the punches alongside willing accomplice Deborah.

His chemistry with Sammi Cheung’s Deborah is great.  They have a good back-and-forth peppered with nice banter, and I really like that they do, solidly, become friends first (well, apart from the one-night-stand, but like I said, the start of the film is way more convoluted than it needs to be.)  Even when they both start to see where things are heading with them, they try to resist it, not wanting the other out of their life but still wanting to avoid the temptation of sexy-times.  It makes the unfortunate love triangle at least a little bit more palatable, as both understand that if they want to take things further, they need to do it right and start fresh, without Tung-choi’s girlfriend in the picture.

Recommend?

In General – Eh, maybe.  If you’re into rom-coms, I’d say it’s decent enough, and you might have a good time.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Possibly.  Again, there’s nothing all that revelatory with Tung-choi, but this performance is a nice bit of fluff, and if you’re looking for Leung as the lead in a romantic comedy, this is a much better choice than Love Me, Love My Money.

Warnings

Sexual content, language, lots of drinking/smoking, and a little bit of violence.

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