The Adventurers (Da mao xian jia, 1995)

Ringo Lam

Hong Kong

110 min, color, Cantonese (English subtitles)

Review © 2004 Branislav L. Slantchev

A misguided concoction of drama, comedy, and implausible action, The Adventurers is bound to disappoint just about everyone. People expecting a Ringo Lam action thriller in the classic tradition of his excellent City on Fire or the less spectacular Prison on Fire won't find much in common with these outings save for Lam's nihilism. Fans of the generally competent main female leads would get to ogle a bit but would be put off by the soporific acting. Even the action is a bit on the cartoonish side to satisfy.

Not Top Gun	An expensive femme

Perhaps Lam's problems can be divided into two categories. First, the script. It's truly awful, one could almost swear it was written by a couple of Hollywood hacks during their vacation in Bangkok. It is a pretty standard story: a guy torn apart by his sense of duty to avenge his parents' deaths and his feelings for a woman who stands between him and his goal. Andy Lau is a Cambodian who witnesses the murder of his family as a child. He is saved by his father's friend (David Chiang) and grows up thirsting revenge. When his direct approach fails to deliver, he sets about to entangle his target's (Paul Chun Pui) beautiful daughter Wu Chien-lien. Naturally, he marries her and falls in love. Would he be able to carry through his mission?

Classic toilet sequence	Rosamund Kwan, temptation #1

OK, so perhaps it's not the most original script. But it could have been saved by decent writing. Unfortunately, the supposedly dramatic story is marred by various "comedic" distractions, mostly on the south side of funny. Except for Wu Chien-lien's scene after she whacks Andy on the head with a bottle, the relief was mostly unnecessary and changed the tone of the film to the point where I did not feel any of the characters was in real danger. (Bad for a Lam film, of course.)

Wu Chien-lien, temptation #2	Andy in his most evocative scene

The second problem is Andy Lau, who looks as if he came on the set between filming five other films. He fumbles and mostly walks around in what we are supposed to construe as melancholic and tormented (by two decades of memories!) expression. In fact, when he does not look asleep, he looks like he has just mislaid his script and is trying to remember what he's supposed to do. Case in point: the hotel room cat fight scene: perhaps Andy enjoys battling femmes just as much as the next guy, but I don't buy it that he was paralyzed with indecision. He had forgotten what to do, and the budget (I hear nearly half of it went to pay Andy's fee) did not allow them to reshoot it. That's my version and I am sticking to it.

Chien-lien: from scared to obnoxious in .1 sec	Spread legs, take aim, shoot!

What else is there? Can you say "Stockholm Syndrome"? If you can, you should not. You should say "totally implausible development" instead. What is it with these writers: beautiful women just need to be kidnapped, nearly raped by goons, threatened with physical harm, humiliated... and they instantly fall in deep love as soon as the bad guy offers them his shoes? Maybe it helps if the bad guy looks like Andy, but I doubt it. And even if you believe that some women would go for this bad guy, it beggars imagination that they would marry him!

Bonding	Gratuitous shot of Wu Chien-lien

Basically the story boils down to Andy choosing between Wu Chien-lien and Rosamund Kwan. That's a choice that no man would be able to make in a hurry. If course, there's that little bit of complication with the fact that Wu is Andy's nemesis's daughter and Rosamund is his woman. But that's the least of Andy's worries, and when he finally makes his choice, I was crying with him. Or at him. At the scriptwriters mostly.

Gratuitous shot of Rosamund KWan	So many soldiers, so little time

Fortunately, Rosamund and Chien-lien salvage a little of the proceedings: they have enough charisma to save even a Wong Jing film, so no surprise there. What was surprising that for all the star power, Ringo Lam's film falls flat as a flabby crepe. Even the explosive finale where jet fighters blow up an entire military camp followed by a spectacular helicopter chase left me uninspired. Nice location shots (Thailand, Cambodia ?, San Francisco) and good English accents for a change just add to the confusion.

Give me the script or Ho Ka-Kui gets it!	We're going to kill you!

Well, ok, maybe it wasn't that bad. I enjoyed The Adventurers but was not thrilled by it. It does have some replay value due to the two female leads despite the cardboard roles they had to play. The violence is what one would expect from Ringo Lam: shootings, beatings, executions, and that's just the first five minutes. For some reason the mass murder scenes left me cold and asking the question: where the attackers the good guys? Hard to tell with all those women and children running from the explosions.

Not Chow Yun-fat	Labor negotiations

The Mei Ah DVD is nothing to write home about. The non-anamorphic letterboxed transfer has decent color and detail but is soft, with some ghosting during fast action scenes. The Cantonese soundtrack sounded a bit muffled, I had to crank it up from the usual level to hear it well. The optional English subtitles have plenty of grammatical errors and are generally never better than average. The trailer for the film is the only extra (in atrocious quality).

July 29, 2004