|
Directed by: John Woo Starring: Leslie Cheung, Chow Yun-Fat, Cherie Chung Zong heng si hai revolves around the lives of three professional thieves: Joe (Chow Yun-Fat), Jim (Leslie Cheung) and Cherie (Cherie Chung) whose friendship and comaraderie goes back as far as they can remember. Although planning to retire after their last daring heist, at the behest of their client they decide to take on ONE LAST JOB: the theft of a cursed painting that soon leads the trio on a number of wacky misadventures involving their childhood mentor Chow and their beat-cop godfather Chu (Kenneth Tsang and Kong Chu, who also both featured in The Killer). In distinct contrast to the rest of his later-era body of work, John Woo's original Hong Kong Once a Thief is a lighthearted romp that mixes a rather cute story and silly comedic antics with his trademark shootouts, melodramatics and visual style. Part of the film is also set in Europe, which makes a nice change from the urban setting of Woo’s other Hong Kong films. Unlike the serious, brooding tone of films such as The Killer or Bullet in the Head, which immediately preceded this, here Once a Thief features a distinctly lighter, overtly more comedic tone to the film, with a number of gags being constantly thrown up onscreen, ranging from embarrassingly cheap and dumb jokes to those that are actually quite clever, sometimes even during the space of a single scene. This resulted in an enterainingly fun viewing for me, one further aided by some great action, a well-fitting but at times familiar (read: liberally borrowed) sounding musical score and Chow seemingly having a ball of a time in the role of Joe, an often hilarious performance also in contrast to what we best know him for. The action scenes are fun, and while not approaching the scope or intensity (obviously) of Woo’s other films, they do deliver their own thrills as they revel in their own over-the-top nature, with the highlights being a brief but entertainingly destructive car chase and more particularly the final battle, where we are treated to flaming microwave-launched basketballs, a guy who uses playing cards as weapons and a hilarious display of Chow Yun-Fat's kung fu “prowess”. However, the film does suffer from a few things, such as a plot that’s a bit hard to keep track of as well the lesser performances of the other two leads, with Leslie Cheung, who basically carries half the film, coming off as a rather bland performer and Cherie Chung pretty much being a non-entity. Also the nature of Woo’s shootouts, whilst not on par with the violence seen in his other works, still at times seems off-tone to the rest of the film. In the end, Once a Thief is a different kind of John Woo movie. It is definitely one of the lesser works of his "heroic bloodshed" period but even so, providing you can get past the change in direction, still remains an immensely fun and entertaining movie. 4/5 PROS: Chow, the entertainingly over-the-top finale. CONS: The plot is a bit hard to keep track of, some of the gags are dumb. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101020/ mrkillboy fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Jul 2, 2004 |
#
?
Jul 1, 2004 19:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 20:27 |
|