First Movie Review in 4 Months

Yep, I looked through my old posts, and my last movie-related post was on September 19, almost 4 months ago. That's kind of ridiculous, for a Cinewhore's blog. It doesn't mean I stopped watching movies or talking about them, just that shit happens and when it does, blogging is always the first thing to be sacrificed.

So I decided to start again. New year, new beginning and all that jazz. So here's the first movie I saw this year, and it's a "local" film - 茶舞 (One Last Dance).

I say "local" because even though it's from Raintree Pictures, the movie-making arm of the evil media conglomerate/monopoly here, it's got a Brazilian writer/director. Now, I have no problems with Brazilian filmmakers. I mean, who can, after City of God, right? My beef is just with the trailers that scream "100% produced in Singapore" and immediately follow that up with a foreign name, as opposed to, say, Tan Ah Kow of Jurong West. To add insult to injury, the top-billed actors are all foreign, and our local talent are mostly used to fill out roles like "Gangster #12" and "Old Man at Bar". Hell, they're lucky if they get a line of dialogue.

But enough about the cast and crew. Let's talk about the actual movie. After all, that's the fairest basis on which to judge a film - whether or not it stands up on its own. And on this basis, how does this flick fare? The answer is: Not very well.

Looking at it, one of the biggest problems lies in the script and dialogue, and how disparate those two factors are. Those who understand Chinese and read the subtitles will quickly realize that what the characters are saying have very little in common with the English subtitles. In fact, in many situations, the subtitles are much cleverer than the actual dialogue spoken. I can only think of one reason for this: That the script was written in English and then translated (badly) into Chinese, losing about 80% of its wit and depth in the process, and the subtitles were taken directly from the actual script. Not that it was that clever in the first place, though... Perhaps it got into Sundance by strength of its subtitles. If so, that would be really sad.

茶舞 wants desperately to be a Quentin Tarantino flick, and to give it credit, the chopped-up structure actually works rather well. Unfortunately, it also wants to be Tarantino-like in its dialogue, and the writer tries to do this with pseudo-intellectual pretentious lines. But it is a sad fact of life that most actors in the region, or most actors period, for that matter, can do these kind of lines properly. And it's all in the delivery, baby. Out of the entire cast, only Francis Ng and Ti Lung have the presence and ability to pull off dialogue like that. Everyone else just kinda woefully flops along. Vivian Hsu tries very hard to add depth to her role, but ultimately it's a one-dimensional character, whose sole reason for being there is to act as the impetus for Francis Ng to start killing a whole bunch of people (oops, I suppose that's a spoiler). However, her character is too thinly-written to be a convincing-enough reason for him to do that, and so the entire basis for the plot falls apart. And don't even get me started on the annoying actor that plays her brother. He was so in-your-face irritating that I spent the entire movie just wishing they'd kill him.

It's a Raintree picture, and so dear Executive Producer D.Y. will have to leave his grubby fingerprints over everything. This comes in the casting of several local celebrities in pointless roles - case in point Hossan Leong and 93.3 DJ Zhou Chongqing in a completely unnecessary scene - and an insulting montage of the killings in chronological order for All The Stupid People Who Didn't Get What Was Going On.

Pacing-wise, it was slack in many parts, and could definitely have benefited from more judicious editing. However, giving credit where it's due, some scenes were treated interestingly enough, like an entire party sequence that's told in polaroid snaps, but even that scene goes on twice as long as it should. Visually speaking, the movie was adequate, but won't be winning any awards for camerawork.

If I had to say something positive about it, it would be Francis Ng and Ti Lung, who manage to play their respective parts well (even though the roles are such weary cliches) and have real chemistry together. But then again, they're much stronger in Hong Kong movies in general than here. Harvey Keitel has a small role but a big credit, and frankly, anyone could've played his part. The less said of everybody else the better.

All in all, not the best movie to start the year off with, according to Cameron's theory. But hey, that means it can only get better from here (and it has).