| Yan Yan (Charlie Yeung) and Kong (Nicky Wu) develop a rivalry during a matchmaking festival and obviously have zero chance of ever falling in love. However, Kong falls victim to a scam, planned by a gang of robbers, and ends up murdered. Cut to 2 weeks later and as a ghost, he turns to Yan Yan for help in stopping his untimely demise, in the past...
The reunion of Charlie Yeung and Nicky Wu from Tsui Hark's visually gorgeous but flawed The Lovers is an unexpected treat of a movie. The expected romance take on a better meaning by the end compared to the former film in which Charlie and Nicky starred but it's the sheer insanity on display that will win certain viewers over, depending on how receptive you are of all this.
Tsui throws buckets of weirdness at us including fairly extensive but rough use of CG (and this is set in 1920s Shanghai just so you know), situation comedy, situation comedy involving lots of projectile vomit, Eric Kot being annoying like only Eric Kot can, frankly creepy after life-esque imagery, time travel and an insanely funny or maybe serious comment on the development of technology during this era. It all adds up to a wild time and only a movie that can come from the imaginative mind of Tsui Hark. Also starring Lau Shun and William Ho. |
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