It's movie review time (should be doing this for some time already, since the jobless me had been watching a lot of movies lately..haha), and I'm going to start with a Hong Kong horror movie I've been wanting to watch for quite some time now; Rule #1.
Language : Cantonese
Release Year : 2008
Director : Kelvin Tong
Main Casts : Shawn Yue, Ekin Cheng, Fiona Xie, Stephanie Che
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| *credit to original source from Hong Kong film poster web for the movie poster. |
"These 2 man, who do you think is the cop?
They both are. The one in front is in plainclothes.
So in a world that neither black nor white, never assume"
|start of movie summary|
The movie started with a very slow (as in not-so-clever-person slow) Sergeant Lee Kwok Keung (Shawn Yue) performing his patrol inside a basement parking area, and stopping a seemingly normal harmless car driving super slowly on its way out of the parking area. Apparently Sergeant Lee noticed that the car driver is not wearing the seat belt, hence stopping him for questioning. He even produced a ticket to the driver for it for good measure. Suspecting something more Sergeant Lee went over to the trunk to further check the car and found out 1 of the backlight was not functioning for the car. While checking on the backlight, there were bloods spilled over Sergeant Lee hand, and this lead to him opening the trunk where he saw a body of young girl full with blood on it. In his shock state, Sergeant Lee didn’t notice that the driver is already out of the car and before he managed to pull out his pistol he was shot by the driver. Then he was shot a few more times, with the driver or should I say the killer taunting him along the way. Just before Sergeant Lee passed out due to the all the shots, he vaguely saw the body of the girls sitting up in the trunk and tearing up her own neck before he managed to grab his pistol and shot dead the killer out of all the confusion/shock situation. Then Sergeant Lee totally passed out.
Fast forward a few scenes, Sergeant Lee was transferred to Miscellaneous Affair Department (MAD) after the incident. Apparently it did due to him not want to change his report of seeing the body sitting up in the trunk i.e. him seeing ghost. So here, in MAD is where our hero meets Inspector Wong (Ekin Cheng) who is in charge of the department. MAD is where any cases that cannot be clearly classified belong to any other departments in the police force were handed to i.e. ranging from prank calls to over suspicious old lady and also surely, ghost matters.
And the rule number one in MAD is “there is no ghost”.
|end of movie summary|
Rule #1 has all the potential to be a very good Asian horror movie. It has all the ingredient of good typical Asian horror movie.
- Slow paced with sudden very well placed burst of pace? Sure, it is not as slow as the Japanese horror movie but still I thought for a HK horror movie, the pace of the movie is just nice. So, checked.
- Good story line? Definitely. I thought this is 1 of the movie strong point. Checked.
- Good acting? I thought Ekin Cheng was very good in his role as an outgoing chief of department. It’s not really easy watching him and not thinking of Chan Ho Nam you know, so credit to him for able to make that. Shawn Yue was decent enough, even though I do not really like his portrayal of a police officer at the start of the movie. Other than that, he did OK in my opinion. So, I checked this.
- Long black haired ghost? Sure, every Asian horror had it. Checked.
- Hot chick? Of course. Checked again.
- Twist at the end? If you let your mind into the movie without really thinking that much, you’ll enjoy the twist a lot more. Checked.
I love it when a movie does not keep you guessing too much on the main concept of the storyline. The let-the-audience-make-up-their-own-mind-on-the-story type of movie is fine with me, as long as the main concept of the story is established. And this story did that, firmly established the main concept of ghost. That is a major plus for this movie.
The twist also is very good. Like I mentioned earlier, if we let our mind into the movie storyline without much deliberating on what everything is all about, the twist is quite good.
However, my main gripe with this movie is that
I know that the movie started with “in a world that neither black nor white, never assume”, but this is not us as a viewer assuming. This is the director planted a scene that never was in the storyline to add to the twist revealed at the end of the movie. And what was the function of the police chase scene at the start of the movie other than to establish the tagline as per mentioned above? A missed opportunity for this movie I guess.
With all the above being said, my overall rating for the movie is
5/10 – a strong premise for an Asian horror story with good acting but spoiled by the scene that never happened pictured as major scene and impacting the ending of the movie.
I do wonder whether we have our own MAD or not in our police force :-p
ciao.
