20131204: Comedy Review--City Under Siege

City under Siege (Chun sing gai bei)

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Hong Kong live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 111 minutes, horror, comedy, action, scifi.  Spoken word is Mandarin and Cantonese.  In the dubbed version, it's English; however, the dubbing is horrible.
2. IMDB: 4.9/10.0 from 509 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet...' and 16% liked it from 230 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.2/5.0 from 13,827 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Benny Chan.
6. Starring: Aaron Kwok as Sunny, Qi Shu as Angel Chan.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film opens in a Japanese prison camp in Maylaysia, 1945.  The Japanese experiment with chemistry to artificially produce a super soldier class so as to turn the tide in World War II.  This fails and the bad stuff seems to be lost.


2. In the present, Sunny is a buffoon in a traveling circus troupe, the Thundering Daggers. He fails at knife throwing, and does better as a clown.  One night he goes with fellow troupe members to check whether a small group has found some gold.  Sunny's fellow circus members knock out the gold hunters. Sunny falls down in the middle of the fight. When he gets his bearings, they recruit him for doing all the dangerous steps first.  The find a bit of gold, but also release the chemicals that the Japanese experimented with.


3. The thieves hop a boat for Hong Kong.  Sunny falls into a fishing boat; he gets very hungry, eats some of the catch, and grows quite fat.  The crew discover him and throw him overboard while out at sea near Hong Kong.  In return for changing her tire, Sunny gets a ride home with Angel, who is a star reporter on CSS News on television. 


4. The mutated thieves stage a violent, showy, and very public attack.  Two expert researchers (Suen Ho and Tai) are brought in by the police.  Angel loses her job because her producer found a younger woman to sleep with.  Sunny regains his usual shape the next morning.  His Uncle Tak thinks Sunny is trouble.  The Malaysian police blame the thieves in the troupe; Tak gets most of his possessions appropriated in recompense.


5. Sunny goes to straighten all this out with the police.  By chance he meets Angel outside the police station where a robber is holding a policewoman hostage.  Sunny throws a stick through glass, then through the robber's hand.  Sunny is lionized, and Angel helps him get away from the crowds.  The mutated thieves see Sunny on TV, and are really angry, since Sunny recovered his normal shape, whereas they stay messed up.  In fact, they are moving to a second stage.  The attack soon enough, and Sunny is both quite skilled at fighting them, but sometimes also quite bad since he is unfamiliar with his mutant powers.


6. The two researchers intervene.  They also have usual abilities, but perhaps not enough to match the thieves.  Sunny and the researchers eventually prevail.  Sunny becomes the hero, and then a media star with Angel's help.  The 'researchers' are just using Sunny as bait.  More confrontations are to come, especially since the lead mutant wants to drink Sunny's blood to return to normal.  In a major confrontation, Tai is killed.  Sunny convinces Suen Ho to train him.  Meanwhile, the mutants continue to evolve and unleash a reign of terror across the defenseless city.  Angel has no idea whether Sunny is alive or dead.


7. Who will win the final confrontation?  Will Sunny find himself before the city is burned down?  Will Sunny and Angel become more than business partners?


3. Conclusions
1. I noticed 'Funimation' in the early credits, and sure enough, some of the voices used for dubbing are veterans from anime titles.
2. One line summary: Fairly good as action-comedy; Funimation did not do well on the dub.
3. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Almost always good-looking and well-shot.


2. Sound: 5/10 The incidental music was reasonable for increasing tension.  Unfortunately, in the dubbed version I watched, the translation was terrible.  The subtitles did not match the spoken dubs most of the time.  The sound of the voice was disinformation.


3. Acting: 6/10 I liked the performances of the two principals, Aaron Kwok and Qi Shu in this film.  However, compared to his performance in the glorious Floating City, Kwok was using less than 10% of his craft.  It was like watching a master chef conducting a wienie roast.  I did not believe the acting of much of the supporting cast.  Hearing the dubs by anime voice actors made this much worse.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 As an action comedy, this should have been quite good.  However, the war between the subtitles and the dubbed text was a major detriment.  The director's intentions were much harder to see when the voice said one thing while the subtitle said something contrary or even contradictory.  When my sons were younger, I watched many hours of anime with them; this was usually the North American version of the anime.  I recognize some of the anime voice actors used in this live action film.  This added another layer of dissonance.


5. SFX: 6/10 Mixed bag here.  Some FX are well done and fit well with the fight choreography.  Others look just plain stupid.  There is also the recurrent matter of explosions that seem to have no cause at all.  I found those the most annoying.