Disagree unfortunately, the entire production seemed very sloppy indeed. There were moments when it was like a student production with expensive cameras and actors, but no tact or forethought into the storytelling aspects.
Characters were painfully one dimensional, and lacked depth completely. Tony Leung's character was especially flawed: either he's a stone cold killer or a soft hearted man - but don't try to confuse the audience with melancholy piano numbers after he's just tried to choke the life out of his own wife with a gas oven.
Many Chinese films handle sentiment improperly, even Infernal Affairs, streets ahead of the this, had its moments. But unlike this, Infernal Affairs new what it was, and stuck rigidly to its storytelling.
Ultimately, this was a poor story, told confusingly in an effort to add depth, that ended up lacking any suspense at all.
All those flashy camera's aren't doing much to save it either (see how many times the camera tracks Tony Leung's wife when she picks up, then puts down, then picks up again, her whisky in the bar with Kaneshiro - awful.)
Anyway, sorry to disagree, but there's nothing happening with this film except a cheap ebay auction. I was the one confessing pain by the end of it.
reply
share
Sophitia36
14 years ago
------------------------------------------------------------------
Characters were painfully one dimensional, and lacked depth completely. Tony Leung's character was especially flawed: either he's a stone cold killer or a soft hearted man - but don't try to confuse the audience with melancholy piano numbers after he's just tried to choke the life out of his own wife with a gas oven.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry but this is full of contradictions. You say the characters are too one-dimensional. A one-dimensional character is a character that has only one dimension, that's to say, it's a type.
And then you criticise Tony Leung's character, saying he should be either the "stone cold killer" or the "soft hearted man" and cannot be both. In other words, you would have liked him to be only one type, not a mix of several types. Which is another way of saying, you would have liked him to be one-dimensional.
Therefore you can't at the same time say the characters were one-dimensional and that it was a bad thing, and in the next sentence, criticise the characters for having multiple, contradictory dimensions... It just doesn't work.
You could argue that having those contradictions in one character isn't believable, but if it has so many contradictions it can't be also "one-dimensional."
Personally, I do believe that real people are complex, and that you can indeed have mixed feelings for someone (wanting to kill the person but still loving her) and feel remorse after you've done something even if it had been planned. Seeing her on her hospital bed could have made him realise that he had actually come to feel something for her, which wasn't part of the plan.
reply
share