Romeo Must Die (product link) Action/Adventure / Martial Arts Romeo Must Die is a movie that is highly flawed, but if you actually bother to pay attention to the small details in the plot it is still enjoyable. This is the type of movie which could be a much better film if it were re-edited: for example, cutting out the x-ray vision scenes, and definitely leaving some of the dialogue in the scene where Trish O'day's brother is smoking weed with his girlfriend/wife/friend/person. In fact, it was the horrible acting job of the guy who played Trish's brother (I can't remember his name) that largely weighed down this film.
Enjoy the film, but don't expect any classic action sequences.
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I agree about the editing, this film could have been a lot better. However, I believe Joel Silver felt that casting Jet Li with Hip-Hop culture stars would at least have DMX and Aliayah fans help balance the receipts at the box office.
In terms of importance alone, "Come Drink With Me" is a five-star movie. King Hu changed the way martial arts films and Hong Kong cinema in general were made with this highly influential film.
Cheng Pei Pei, best known to western audiences as Jade Fox from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," is absolutely beautiful in this movie and puts in a great performance as the film's main protagonist, Golden Swallow. Drunken Cat is another entertaining character, though the actor who portrayed him didn't seem very drunk at all. The film's music is also memorable, and is likely to get stuck in the head of the viewer for the rest of the day after watching it.
Though the film is very important, it doesn't quite hold up after forty years, which is what kept it from recieving a perfect score. It is still entertaining, but some viewers of newer martial arts and wuxia may feel disappointed with the slow action of this classic.
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Good review. Cheng Pei-Pei was beautiful, graceful, and deadly. Yueh Hua was also quite good in his portrayal of Drunken Cat. As a whole though slow, the total movie was excellent.
Chungking Express (product link) Art "Chungking Express" is the rare film that is both experimental yet irresistibly fun. It will be more well appreciated by fans of art cinema than it will by most HK cinema fans, but those who approach it with an open mind will likely find it to be an enormously rewarding experience.
"Express" eschews traditional plot structure for a more "slice of life" approach to narrative, portraying the daily lives of four lonely Hong Kong dwellers. Besides the gorgeous cinematography courtesy of Andrew Lau and Christopher Doyle, the real scene stealer is first time actress Faye Wong, who plays what can really only be described as an endearing stalker.
This film, along with its spiritual sequel "Fallen Angels", is probably the most accessible of Wong Kar-Wai's oeuvre. While much is to be said about all of his films in general, "Chungking Express" remains my personal favorite.
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Absolutely. I'm not the biggest WKW fan, but this film is tops.
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