Back together after directing distinctive halves (one silly, one serious) of My School Mate, The Barbarian, despite Wong Jing as writer/producer, the thriller affair Set Up settles on being one genre. In a way it's Wong Jing merging better with a filmmaker like Chung as the script leans slightly towards the exploitation side of both. Then again, it also leans towards the shameless imitator Wong Jing as I'm sure (but can't say for sure now) this frame story has been done in a known movie before (some hints of The Eye in reverse and Panic Room I guess?).

Actually opening in a quite clever way as we see Moon highly immersed in her fictional world (her as the the prince of darkness exorcist but receiving a real life phone call within this illusion illustrates this), the switch to lighter emotions is the Wong Jing threat but we're probably more distracted by obvious script inclusions such as Moon receiving a harpoon as a wedding gift. Obvious prop destined for a call back but whatev, no one is reinventing the wheel script-wise here. Billy Chung also shows his love for over the top style with high usage of tilted angles and sped up imagery and for me, I wonder if Set Up will be one of those stylistic excursions equaling both lazy but that I'll fall for as I'm weak for loud imagery. In fact, Chung creates a conflict in his direction via this usage. Part hyper, part simmering mystery, Chung wants his narrative to be a slow burner. He should've tied his shoelaces properly first as this choice makes him trip constantly.

There is a fairly well created aura of mystery before Roy Cheung and company are introduced and one shouldn't let a low budget automatically mean a dismissal of a film. But the tense thrills and a FASTER pace to this largely one location movie is seriously lacking and even though Chung uses flashback exposition in an amusing way as he flashbacks just a few seconds after events (a device used much more poorly in his King Of Robbery), the basic need of Set Up never gets fulfilled. Unfortunately we know the filmmakers won't rebound with amping of tension as we roll along.

In fact, as Christy Chung exhibits the feisty, fighting heroine the script calls for her to be, this aspect falls into the silly column as the once blind girl all of a sudden displays a creativity in setting traps. Basically being more resourceful than we ever expected and there isn't even ONE line by Wong Jing to set this up. Even I as a pretty bad viewer in terms of paying attention thought this lacked believability and therefore something surely must reek. Christy Chung wanders aimlessly but doesn't manage to embarrass herself and Roy Cheung puts forth leadership presence but at the end of the day, better filmmakers should make this film. Or they already did.

With this sort of plot and Wong Jing writing and producing the project, I thought Set Up might have been a nice, bloody female revenge flick in the vein of some of the classics of the genre like Her Vengeance. These types of movies weren't even produced too often during Hong Kong's modern "golden age" of film-making, and it has been several years since a mainstream star has appeared in a revenge picture, so I was (even with Hong Kong's fairly dismal output this year) pretty excited to check out Set Up. Sadly, this movie is nowhere close to being a classic, much less even an average Wong Jing sex and violence romp.

Set Up's biggest problem is probably the pacing. There's just way too much time dedicated to throwaway scenes like Christy gabbing with her girlfriends. It takes about a half-hour for the story to really get going, and by that point, I had, for the most part, lost interest. Also, Christy's character is never fully developed -- more screen time is given to her sister (played by Winnie Leung), which seems strange, given the sister's relative unimportance in the plot as a whole. Probably most damningly, Set Up is just plain boring -- there's not even the trademark boobs and blood one would expect from a Wong Jing movie of this type.

There are a couple of good points about Set Up that ultimately save it from B-movie hell. Roy Cheung does some solid work -- but this guy's played so many criminals in his career, he can probably pull off this kind of performance in his sleep. Christy Chung, as one would expect, looks very nice, even though she's stuck wearing the same outfit for most of the movie. There's also a couple of scenes where Christy sets up traps for the criminals that show a bit of promise. Unfortunately, like most recent Hong Kong productions, Set Up seems to promise a lot of things, but never delivers on any of them.