REVIEW:
With Legend of Speed, director Andrew Lau tries to take his style and apply it to the racing scene. Legend of Speed tries to mix videogame-like racing action with large doses of sappy sentimentalism. It's a movie not unlike many of the good-looks, flashy movies of recent years in both HK and the U.S. It's a fairly entertaining ride, but also seems to have somewhat of an identity crisis and suffers from its share of "cheese".

It would be fair to tell everyone that this movie isn't balls-out racing action, beginning to end. Nonetheless, the racing that everything revolves around is quite stylish. It's openly videogame inspired and that works fairly well. I may be a little biased in this respect, though, as a big fan of videogames, including the Gran Turismo games. The opening sequence is a polygonal animated race scene that is very similar to the opening and replay sequences in many racing games. Throughout the real races, we see many of the same types of shots and even special effects, such as the trails of headlights as cars whip around. I'm not a racing expert by any means, but I don't think the movie is looking to get any points for realism - but it does get by purely on style.

On the other hand, this movie switches gears heavily into sappy, sentimental mode quite often. It certainly makes what would've been a bland street racing story much more interesting, but at times sometimes seems like they are trying to push it too much. I am reluctant to go into too much detail about some of these moments, to avoid spoilers. Nonetheless, these moments are a mixed bag. They hit the right notes sometimes, but seem a little manufactured and cheesy at times, too. It may also be argued that a little too much time was spent on the subplot of Sky finding his father. This did give a lot of background to Sky's character, while theoretically allowing him to change, being a more dynamic character. Unfortunately, I didn't feel the change in his character as much as I feel I should have, especially given the moments and conversations he had with his father. It also did completely break up the pacing of the surrounding plot.

The performances in the movie are also a little bit of a letdown. Ekin is okay, not great, not bad. Cecilia Cheung is about the same in her limited screen time. Many of the other characters, though, aside from the villain who was quite good, were fairly annoying and much more immature than called for. I didn't get a vibe from really any of the characters, and it really looked like B-grade acting across the board. Unfortunately, thanks to this, some scenes do not come off with the intended impact and come off much sillier in the end.

Legend of Speed is a hard movie to totally decide on. It was engaging enough that I was locked while watching it and the style during the racing was quite fun. But, the performances and some of the iffy over-dramatic parts did kind of bug me, too. In the end, I'd have to recommend this as rental quality. It's a decent viewing, but I can't imaging being compelled to watch it again.

If you've read a few of my reviews before, you'll know that I am not Ekin Cheng's biggest fan. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he's one of the worst -- if not the worst -- actors to come out of Hong Kong in recent years. And judging by newsgroup posters, this movie ranks as one of his worst -- and that's saying a lot. I can see why some people hate this movie. Let's run down the list, shall we?

Ekin Cheng stars as Sky, a rather obnoxious champion of the underground world of illegal racing. When his car is rammed off the road by his arch rival Tong Fung (played by Simon Yam) Sky's girlfriend is killed. The police find heroin in the wreck of Sky's car and he flees to Thailand to search for his father Black Tone, a legendary illegal racer. Sky, now much humbled, eventually finds his father (played by Blackie Ko) who helps his son regain his confidence and encourages him to return to Hong Kong to face Tong Fung again.

While the story isn't the most complicated, the movie's quite easy to watch and is actually quite engaging once Simon Yam appears as the villain. As always Simon Yam is well cast in the role of the baddy playing it with casual coolness.

Ekin Cheng's character is a little unusual to begin with as he is completely arrogant and unlikeable. After winning an early race he demands that the other driver pays the forfeit of having his leg broken and he acts aloof in the company of his friends, actually turning on them at times. This all makes it difficult to feel any sympathy for Sky when events turn against him. Rather you think that he had it coming.

Ekin isn't really given the opportunity to do anything different and I really couldn't see much difference between Sky and the Y&D character.

On the plus side the car and motorbike races are all extremely well filmed with interesting use of computer generated sequences in the movie's climax. The race sequences really do have you on the edge of your seat with motorbikes nipping in and out of busy traffic as they race through Hong Kong.

A completely different kind of movie altogether then from Full Throttle in terms of mood as this is far more mainstream. Not a patch on the first movie.