I’ve had
my eye on this film for a while – Tony Leung Chiu-wai hasn’t been in a ton of
movies since I started getting into his work in the mid-2000s, so any film of
his that’s come out in recent years catches my attention. Unfortunately, most of them aren’t available
through Netflix, so it wasn’t until I stepped up my game with A Little TLC(w)
and started poking around in other places that I’ve been able to get my hands
on some of them. Luckily, I was able to
rent a streaming video of this one through Amazon.
Bully
Lei, a warlord, has been trying to woo his seventh wife, and all she likes are
magic shows. Of course, there’s the
small matter of the facts that 1) he’s holding her father as a political
prisoner and 2) he married her against her will, so it doesn’t seem like a
magic show will really be the key to her heart, but he’s trying. A small theatre is touting their new magician
Chang Hsien, rumored to possess real powers.
Now, if you were a group of rebels looking to kidnap a warlord on the
hunt for the perfect magic show, wouldn’t you want a magician on your side?
A very
interesting premise, and I love all the scenes pulling back the curtain, so to
speak, on the mechanics behind Chang Hsien’s tricks. On the whole, though, the movie falls a
little short for me. It’s hard to put my
finger on the exact why – some of the humor is overly-broad, there are places
where the plot gets unnecessarily busy – but it doesn’t quite live up to its
promise. That said, I repeat: I do love the magic scenes, both the ones
that reveal “howdy doodat” and the ones that don’t. They’re well-shot and well-executed. I also appreciate that Yin, Bully Lei’s
seventh wife, isn’t a poor damsel, nor is she merely a “feisty captive.” The story gives her some agency beyond
waiting for rescue.
Bonus
point: the movie features a very brief
appearance by Daniel Wu, who plays Sunny on Into
the Badlands. Now, Wu is an American
who became a big-name actor in China and has since been breaking into
Hollywood, but I came at his work backwards with Bandlands, so this is the first Chinese movie I’ve seen him in.
As Chang
Hsien, Leung is at the center of the film.
“Mysterious” is his whole shtick, so he gets mileage out of being just a
little unfathomable. His expression is
often vague, and even when he smiles, it rarely reaches his eyes. For me, that makes the character a bit hard
to connect with, and I think it’s probably exacerbated by the fact that this is
a mainland film, so Leung’s Mandarin is dubbed – I’m not sure if his own line
delivery would’ve brought the performance home a bit more.
Not that
it’s a bad performance; it’s just kind of remote, and even then not
throughout. There are some long, still
moments when Chang Hisen’s expression becomes a private book for an audience of
one to read, and those scenes are highly effective. He also carries off the magician aspect
well. I’m curious to know how much of it
is camera trickery and how much of it is Leung performing the illusions himself. Enquiring minds…
Recommend?
In
General
– Maybe. It’s all right but not great. Might be worth a watch.
Tony
Leung Chiu-wai
– Eh, maybe. Other than the magic
(which, again, is fun,) there’s not a whole lot here that you can’t see Leung
do better elsewhere.
Warnings
Violence,
sexual references, language, drinking, and thematic elements.
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