Twins Mission (Seung chi sun tau) centers on a martial arts school called "Twins", whose members are all twins (get it?). Some of the former members are now performing circus acts, including acrobats Pearl and Jade (Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung). Another former member Lau Hay (Wu Jing), whose twin brother is gravely ill, is commissioned to protect the mysterious "Heavens Bead" from Tibet, with assistance from Uncle Luck (Sammo Hung). However, some evil former Twins members steal the precious bead, prompting Uncle Luck to seek help from ex-Twins leader Chang Chung (Yuen Wah). Chang Chung then sends Pearl and Jade for a mission to uncover the "Heavens Bead". The girls have to fend off the rival twins who try to stop them every bit of the way. The evil set of Twins are after the bead, under the orders of Mr. Mok (Sek Sau). If Mr. Mok has the bead, he'll have leverage with Lillian (Jess Zhang), who owns land that he's after. The only reason she needs it is due to it magical healing properties that will cure her younger sister, Happy (Qiu Lier), who has cancer. Pearl and Jade end up with control of the Bead and try to help Lillian, but Mr. Mok gets the upper hand by kidnapping Lillian's sister Happy. Time for our girls to gear up for a little revenge and rescue.
The Twins are back for their twelfth movie together and boy is this one for the ages. The plot is what one might call a, "train wreck of sorts". There are tons of scenes that seem to exist for no reason whatsoever, and really do nothing to move the story forward in any way. Honestly, they just seem to confuse the viewer. Just when the plot verges on the edge of unbearable, there is a slight break for some action. Before you get too excited, all this means is you now get to see the girls replaced with obvious body doubles while the editing tries it's best to hide the fact that it's really not them. One the other hand, you do get Sammo Hung , Wu Jing, and Sek Sau, who do a pretty good job in their fight scenes, but that's to be expected. That being said, it's still not enough to recommend even to the biggest Twin fan. So in the end Twins Misson throws a lot at you, but the stuff it's throwing is a bevy of bad green screen and C.G. effects, plus tons of "wire-fu" fight scenes that just hurt the final product more than it helps. The Twins Mission is hopefully the last one we'll go on, but somehow I highly doubt it. (Converter)
My Wife Is a Gangster 3 (Jopog manura 3) centers around half Chinese-half Korean, Lim Aryong (Shu Qi) who gets sent to South Korea to "lay low" by her father (Ti Lung), who just happens to be the head of a major Triad gang and is engaged in a bloody power struggle in Hong Kong. In Korea, Aryong meets kindhearted gangster Ki Chul (Lee Bum Soo) who, unaware of her identity, tries to protect her from the legions of thugs hunting her down.
Well, before you get too excited for the third installment in this wildly successful series, you should know that it has nothing to do with the previous films, other than the title and the director (well, from the first one anyway). The first big change is the fact that the female lead is no longer played by Eun-Kyung Shin and has been replaced by Chinese star Shu Qi (The Transporter, So Close, and Gorgeous to name a few). It seems that the trick this time around is location, location, location, by emphasizing the fact that the Chinese main character is stuck in South Korea while having no knowledge of the Korean language. While there, she is baby-sat by three "would be" triad tough guys, led by Ki-Chul. Ki-Chul and his crew hire a translator, Yeon-Hee (Yeong Hyeon), to help communicate with Aryong. They soon get on the same page with Aryong telling them she wants any information they can find on her long lost mother whom she believes is somewhere in Korea. During all of this, the two leads, Ki-Chui and Shu Qi, fall for each other (love knows no language) right in time for her fathers enemies to catch up to her!
My Wife is a Gangster 3 is a mixed bag if there ever was one. It has a popular Chinese film star in a fish out of water storyline with everything needing to be translated and drug out for one hundred and fifteen minutes. The only way I can recommend this is if your a fan of Shu Qi and that's about it. The story is comprised of a paper thin plot and is primarily what you're exposed to for the film's incredibly long (for a comedy) running time. The fact that the poorly choreographed fight scenes are so few-and-far between don't help matters either. The majority of humor in the film is placed on Ki-Chul and his two lackeys as they sit back and receive mistranslated dialogue from Aryong via Yeon-Hee. These jokes get old pretty quick and are relied upon for laughs far too often. By the time the movies finale rolls around, the action and the comedy taking place begin to feel like "too-little-too-late", leaving the viewer feeling ultimately dissatisfied and disappointed in a series that seemed to have so much potential. At this point, I can't say that I'd be too excited at the prospect of a My Wife is a Gangster 4. (Converter)
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A near perfect example of style over substance, House of Fury marks Stephen Fung's second foray into directing territory. The jokes are clearly aimed at a younger audience, but thanks to some excellent action choreography from Yuen Wo Ping, the end result is a film that's good enough to please hardcore martial arts aficionados and the little ones as well. Families are more than welcome.
Siu Bo (Anthony Wong), an aging widower, works as a practitioner in ancient Chinese medicine at a clinic which is frequented by his close friend Uncle Chiu (Ma Wu). When he's not running his clinic, he's at home trying to deal with his two, near-grown and constantly bickering children, Nicky (Stephen Fung) and Natalie (Gillian Chung). Nicky works as a dolphin trainer at Ocean Park and swoons over his sisters cute friend Ella (Charlene Choi). Natalie, on the other hand, has a significant other in Jason (Daniel Wu), a musician with a bad Cantonese accent who just wants to make a good impression on the family by doing cute things like bringing a baby pig over for dinner. Siu Bo loves to embarrass his children by telling jokes and stories about how life used to be and all of the exciting things he used to do in front of his children's friends. Naturally, his kids never take anything dad has to say as truth and would rather he just shut up. It's a seemingly typical family relationship that's only unique due to the fact that everyone knows kung-fu and they're not afraid to use it! Nicky and Natalie love to squabble with each other and lucky for us viewers, they make it look so good.
A typical day at the 'office' turns into anything but when Rocco (played by questionably talented Michael Wong) shows up to question Siu Bo on the location of a man named Tai Chi Lung. Apparently this Tai Chi Lung is responsible for paralyzing Rocco from the neck down twelve years ago while Rocco was on a mission in the Philippines. Now Rocco has arrived in Hong Kong to return the favor. Siu Bo plays the fool and sends Rocco and his son Nelson (14 year old karate/taekwondo prodigy Jake Strickland) packing. We know Siu Bo is hiding something and suddenly all those stories about being a secret agent and doing undercover work don't seem so far-fetched. Unfortunately for Siu Bo, Rocco knows he's hiding the truth as well and sends his henchman to beat the answers out of him and trash the clinic in the process. Rocco takes Siu Bo captive and now it's up to Nicky and Natalie, with a little help from their friends, to find dear old dad and discover who this Tai Chi Lung is once and for all. The 'third-act' has a surprise(?) twist to it that you really won't care about. After finding out who's who, you'll more than likely just be eagerly awaiting when the next fights going to happen.
Everyone does what's required of them for the sake of the movie, as it's most definitely not a vehicle in which to show off acting chops. It's all very passable stuff for the most part. Anthony Wong is an actor who makes every performance look effortless (and I mean that in a good way). Gillian Chung does a fine job at playing the stereotypical diva-like younger sister, who transitions nicely into a butt-kicking action heroine when the time is right. Stephen Fung does more than adequate with his fighting scenes. Daniel Wu just hangs out most of the time, coming into play later on in the movie in ways in which I can't reveal here, while Charlene Choi manages to stay on screen just long enough to make it a starring role and not a cameo. Jake Strickland, 14 years old or not, can really hold his own and his skills with a bo are pretty amazing. His acting on the other hand was pretty terrible, to the point where you could really believe he was Michael Wong's son. Speaking of which, the real bad guy of the movie, in more ways than one, is indeed Michael Wong as Rocco. Not only is he the villain in the traditional sense of movie baddies, but his horrible acting makes him even more of a threat. He speaks in English only (except for a sentence or two in Cantonese), and you'd swear that he's just reading off the script while the cameras are rolling. The man couldn't deliver a pizza, let alone a line of dialogue. Be afraid dear viewer...be very afraid.
We definitely aren't dealing with an award-winning storyline here either, but anything more than what we get wouldn't be necessary. It really just serves as filler in-between the real reason you're watching in the first place: the fight scenes, and boy are their a lot of them. Seeing as we have the best in the business responsible for planning out the action, that's a good thing. Yuen Wo Ping, together with Stephen Fung's direction, does an outstanding job at making the actor's look like they really know how to fight. To Stephens credit the shots are cut in just the right way so that your not clearly looking at a stunt double performing some of these moves, and the fact that Stephen lets the actors 'breath' by actually showing us the fights is icing on the cake. There is nothing worse in a martial arts film than tight shots where the audience can't even tell whats going on or who's hitting who. Equally as impressive are the close-ups of the actors actually performing some of these well-choreographed scenes, leaving no question of their capability. At times the action relies a little too much on the wires, or cables, or whatever you want to call them, making for some obvious and ugly looking moves, but these instances are more in the minority than majority. The scene at the closed Ocean Park with Nicky, Natalie and two of Rocco's hench(women) was my personal favorite, minus the wire-fu of course.
It's campy and it's childish, but it's also fun and often times entertaining. You couldn't have asked for a better action choreographer than Yuen Wo Ping to give House of Fury and it's 'almost' entireley A-list castsome much needed credibility. However, you could've asked for a better actor to play Rocco. In the end, not even Michael Wong could ruin House of Fury and that's really saying something. (Lee)
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Twins Mission (Seung chi sun tau) centers on a martial arts school called "Twins", whose members are all twins (get it?). Some of the former members are now performing circus acts, including acrobats Pearl and Jade (Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung). Another former member Lau Hay (Wu Jing), whose twin brother is gravely ill, is commissioned to protect the mysterious "Heavens Bead" from Tibet, with assistance from Uncle Luck (Sammo Hung). However, some evil former Twins members steal the precious bead, prompting Uncle Luck to seek help from ex-Twins leader Chang Chung (Yuen Wah). Chang Chung then sends Pearl and Jade for a mission to uncover the "Heavens Bead". The girls have to fend off the rival twins who try to stop them every bit of the way. The evil set of Twins are after the bead, under the orders of Mr. Mok (Sek Sau). If Mr. Mok has the bead, he'll have leverage with Lillian (Jess Zhang), who owns land that he's after. The only reason she needs it is due to it magical healing properties that will cure her younger sister, Happy (Qiu Lier), who has cancer. Pearl and Jade end up with control of the Bead and try to help Lillian, but Mr. Mok gets the upper hand by kidnapping Lillian's sister Happy. Time for our girls to gear up for a little revenge and rescue.
