Tag: andy lau

Cantonese movies!

I had two flights on Emirates Airlines over the weekend, so since I was trapped in that uncomfortable metal box for almost 15 hours total, I decided to spend it studying. So I chose to watch the Cantonese in-flight entertainment and listen to Cantopop on the music station. September is Jacky Cheung month! And there was Sam Hui and Anita Mui as well! They also have an awesome Japanese selection as well, 15 hours wasn’t enough to listen to most of it. The movies I watched were both pretty bad though.

The first one was “Future X-Cops” (未來警察 in Cantonese) starring Andy Lau. What a horrible film. The premise is like Terminator mixed with all the other Back-to-the-Future kind of films, except it’s all over the place and doesn’t even make much sense. Basically Andy’s wife gets killed in 2080 trying to foil an attempt on a Professor’s life. Afterwards he’s sent back in time to protect that Professor as a kid because the assassins have gone back to try and kill him. There are so many problems with the premise that I don’t even know where to start, but it’s all good because the story takes second place to the horrible, horrible effects, bad acting and lame attempts at comedy. I really like Andy Lau, but if he thinks this is a good movie he needs to retire, like, yesterday.

The second movie was called “Beauty on Duty.” Clever name for a rather dumb movie. It’s a Hong Kong remake of Sandra Bullock’s “Miss Congeniality”, not exactly the best movie in the world to begin with. The writers decided to give it a mo lei tau spin, so it’s a silly, hokey hodgepodge of misadventures: electronic crocodiles, ‘Genetic Self-Control Disposition’, running around with a dead body, etc. That sort of thing. Eventually the bad guys are foiled with no loss of life and everything ends happily ever after. I suppose.

There was a third movie running called “Hot Summer Days”, but after the fail that was the first two, I decided to stick to music and napping instead. After all, learning a language isn’t about forcing yourself to do things you normally wouldn’t. It’s about having fun. Right?

Infernal Affairs movie review

Quick Review
I watched this famous Hong Kong film starring Tony Leung and Andy Lau last weekend. Tony stars as Yan, a police mole deep within a triad gang. Andy stars as Lau, a gang mole high up in the police service. After a botched gang cocaine trade, both higher ups charge their moles with finding the identity of the other group’s mole. And so a deadly game of cat-and-mouse begins.

First, spoilers for the ending. Quick! Look away! Yan dies, Lau gets away with everything.

The acting is brilliant, the music is really good. Lights, action, cinematography, everything about Infernal Affairs is brilliant except one thing…the plot. The characters are really too stupid for words. What bothered me the most?

1. Lau managing to get all sorts of information to his triad boss during a stakeout, with the rest of the police force sitting right by him. Eventually it’s revealed that the guy right next with him was in the triad too, which is why he got away with it, but at the time it really pissed me off.
2. Yan picking up his phone after Inspector Wong died. The first thing he should have done was trash that thing and hope the number couldn’t be traced to him. Better hope he had a special phone only for Wong affairs.
3. Yan trusting Lau immediately and going along with him, all while knowing of the existence of a triad mole within the police. Dumbass.
4. Yan having solid evidence of Lau being the triad’s mole and choosing to blackmail him with it instead of turning it straight into the police. THIS DID NOT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL! Did he have a deathwish? I can only conclude he had a deathwish.
5. Yan confronting Lau face-to-face before making arrangements to have the evidence sent to the police. This allowed Lau to get clean away with everything once Yan has been killed by a bad cop. What An Idiot!

The ‘Lau Wins’ ending evidently went down pretty badly because eventually they trotted the same actors out for Infernal Affairs 3 (Infernal Affairs 2 apparently does not deserve to be mentioned) where Lau eventually pays for his sins. Yah, whatever. Infernal Affairs was really gripping, but now that it’s over I don’t think I want to watch it again. But I was impressed by both Andy and Tony, so I’ll be looking for more films by them in the future.