A darn good sci-fi chinese action movie

Man, everybody laughed and said it was too risky when Louis Koo wanted to make this movie, but hot dang it is one of the best - if not the best - chinese sci-fi movies made in recent memory. The special effects do range between convincing to a little awkward in some scenes, but overall this is awesome and full of incredible action set pieces that I would say are near-Hollywood quality. The story is something that we’re already seen before. Humanity has ruined the atmosphere and made the air toxic, and to top it off a meteor falls onto Earth in district B12 and an alien plant life form sprouts from it uncontrollably every so often, threatening life on Earth. Sure, many common tropes are in play here and recycled, but it is done here very well is a roster of huge HK stars to carry it. I had a lot of fun watching it and it is worth rewatching in future for the great action

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Just what the f were the writers smoking?

Like what on earth were the writers on? I ask this because this drama just had me going “wtf?” almost constantly. Most of Bosco Wong’s stuff is not bad, even at it’s worse it’s at least a 5-6 score and average. This somehow managed to be less than average, and as I am currently 14 episodes in I am not holding out any hope of this getting better.

The drama is about Chrissie Chau playing two roles as twin sisters. The younger sister is an insurance broker whereas the elder sister is a Singaporean elite cop. These twins were separated since they were kids and have not seen each other in 20 years. The younger sister was mixed up in some shady stuff and while in Singapore she gets murdered and has her heart removed by organ traffickers. Cop sister discovers this and decides to travel to Hong Kong undercover to find who killed her sister.

Now, this is not a bad premise, except that there were some things I saw that made me go “wtf?” Cop sister takes on the identity of her sister to investigate what led to her sisters death, but while in the role we discover the younger sister was a disgusting harlot of a woman, sleeping around to get promoted, worked as a nightclub girl AKA prostitute to get money, was involved with a terrorist group called Green World, was working with a really shady man played by Derek Kwok, all of this while dating Bosco Wong’s HK police officer. As each revelation was revealed it just made me feel less and less sympathy for the younger sister because she was doing some real shady crap.

Bosco’s character is a real idiot as well because if he really was a good boyfriend he should have been able to immediately tell that the girl was not the same girl as his girlfriend as there were too many contradictions in everything she does. I kept screaming at my TV telling him to just bug her and find out what she was doing because that would have sorted out so many misunderstandings early.

Meanwhile, it seemed every single man was swooning over her, trying to hit on her or show general interest. She is pretty, no doubt, but I feel she was not THAT pretty, I found it all too unbelievable. The drama slowly became this sausagefest with her as the only taco, and I had to keep cringing at this.

What also made me start to hate Chrissie Chau’s character was how she used her Kevin Chu and Alex Fong. Alex Fong plays her boyfriend while she was in Singapore, but we do not know what their actual relationship is until many episodes later. After she goes to Hong Kong undercover she constantly asked him for his hacking services, and he becomes fed up because he was constantly waiting for her to come home, so he started dating somebody else. She finds out in a scene when he was in Hong Kong with his new girlfriend, but I couldn’t find myself blaming him. Suddenly, she shifts her attention to Kevin Chu, who was her sister’s best friend and just so happened to also be a hacker! Kevin actually worked out earlier on that Chrissie was not the younger sister, so she came clean with her cop identity and asked him to help her find the killers. She spent so many scenes just asking him to hack for her and do really dangerous reconnaissance, tasks that had him nearly get his organs harvested twice, and yet he still listens to her commands. I shook my head every time I saw a scene with them both and she asks him to hack this or be bait for that. Just stop it, please!

This drama is not complete yet so we’ll see how it fairs in the later episodes, but for now it is just a crapfest. Maybe we find out the younger sister was also a member of an assassin guild and had a secret child with one of the men? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Update:

I have finished watching this drama and the ending was so abrupt it had me going “what the f…”. So there is a huge plot twist where the younger sister was not dead but was pretending so she could plot her way to taking over her elder sister’s identity. Why? Because she wanted to escape her criminal past, and pinning all her crimes on her elder sister before killing her and taking place was her method of doing it. What this essentially means is that the whole premise of the drama has been a lie to us and a massive waste of time, because the whole reason the elder sister was in Hong Kong was to avenge her sister, and suddenly “Oh actually the sister ain’t dead, lol”.

Now there are so many plotholes that blew my mind that I had to ask how little the writers were paid. At the beginning of the drama we see the corpse of the younger sister, we see they have the same appearance and everything and even the coroner confirmed the DNA as well. So how did she fake this death? They visit a doctor and he explained how it was possible the younger sister donated bone marrow to someone so when the blood was tested for DNA it would have the sister’s DNA in there. Okay fine, but how did they explain the same appearance of the corpse as it was clearly the twin. They don’t mention this at all, no plastic surgery or anything, they simply brush it off as “oh yeah bone marrow.” They brought up the possibility of the coroner being unreliable, but if so why would they need the bone marrow transplant excuse? The coroner could just make it up, so it made noooo sense.

The drama tried to wrap up too quickly at the end. We spend the first 20 episodes slowly uncovering the nonsense plot the drama introduced, but it spends the last 4 episodes trying to quickly wrap everything up, with the final episode feeling especially rushed as they tried to cram as many resolutions in there as possible. Right at the end the sisters face off in an elevator and the younger sister forces the elder to shoot her to death. We see this reveal later when Bosco runs to the elevator and the doors open to show the younger sister dead, but we see that the elder sister doesn’t even shed a tear for her sibling and just walks out, says a few words while looking back snd then the drama ends. What?

But the biggest sin this drama threw at me was the death of Kevin Chu. I mean his acting was average but I felt bad for the idiot constantly putting his life in danger for the elder sister. He laters gets kidnapped and becomes paralyzed from the neck down, which really had me angry at the elder sister. But the last straw was when the drama has the younger sister appear to him while he was in his wheelchair and just outright murders him because he thought the elder sister was “better”. Come on give that guy a break! For that sin alone, this drama is not worth rewatching even as a joke.

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Another victim of the Ruco Chan curse

First 10 episodes:

So far this drama is good, and I know for a fact Ruco Chan is not going to die at the end of this drama because it is a comedy first and other drama is secondary.

I’ll provide a more thorough review once this drama is completed, but overall this is very funny and has some great moments in it. The one thing that seems to ruin the immersion for me is the blatant advertising of products in the show. Usually it is just Sea Horse Furniture’s mattresses that ate advertised, this is fine as it doesn’t get in the way of the plot, but here there have been so many products advertised it made me go “Why that? Why there?” For example, I never thought I would see Po Chai Pills being advertised so clearly, and yet here it is shoved in our faces. These product placements make me shake my head.

Hopefully this show has a good ending! Let’s wait and see!

Update after completing the show:

I feel like drinking Malvira wine for some reason. If you're happy, Malvira. If you're sad, Malvira. If you're horny, Malvira. Man, they really go a little nuts with this product placement in the drama that I really do not want to see another Malvira bottle of wine for as long as I live.

I swear TVB is out for Ruco's blood because they decided to give him this role where he is a massive useless idiot. I don't understand why his recent dramas all have great starts but have extremely lacklustre endings as the drama slowly deteriorates from something potentially good into something so full of s**t. I am calling this the Ruco Chan curse because all of his recent dramas, where he has been the main male lead, have been this way. Will his run of nonsense end eventually?

The story starts off with Ruco being this really lucky guy who had gotten to his current work position out of pure good luck, but due to a bad financial decision by his wife played by Jinny Ng, they lose all of their money, so they both decide to go to Beijing to start over with Ruco as a CEO for a company there. He is later joined by his siblings, played by Tony Hung and Joey Thye, but then there is a huge plot twist where it turns out he is not really the CEO of the company but a target of a elaborate revenge plot by ex-colleague played by Marco Lo, who wanted revenge against Ruco because Ruco's luck resulted in Marco losing everything in Hong Kong. Ruco is then tasked with a redevelopment project to turn an abandoned park into a 500 million RMB cash generating area within a year or there would be consequences.

This was quite a good start and the premise was full of potential, but it was completely wasted. The main characters all bounce off each other well at the beginning, and many of the jokes and antics were truly hilarious that made the first half of the drama easily 8-9 out of 10. And then - of course - the Ruco curse hit, and it hit hardcore.

We get introduced to a girl played by Jacky Cai that Ruco once met many years ago for one day, ONE DAY, where they shared the day and it made Jacky smitten with him. She asked him to return a year later to meet up again but he was unable to make it due to having stomach problems, so a lot of the drama after they meet again was basically her secretly pushing Ruco to do things that would drive a wedge between him and his wife. She clearly wants to take the wife's place; she even imagines being with Ruco, marrying him and having his son, so how more obvious can it be that she wanted to get with him? This, of course, make his wife suspicious and grow enormously jealous, but Ruco keeps hanging out with Jacky despite his wife actively showing her distaste, and do you know why? Because Ruco is useless!

After being given the task of turning the abandoned park into a 500 million RMB cash generating area within a year, Ruco was unable to find any investors at all. We watch as he hopelessly tries to get investors, so it ends up with Jacky helping him out the entire time, getting him all these investors and big brands to sign up to the project, so clearly Ruco had no choice but to keep her closeby. What I found really stupid was that right near the end when things were really bad between Ruco and his wife, we find out Jacky had been fired from her consultant job because she had been spending too much time helping Ruco out, so what did she do? She just ups and left, leaving a note saying good luck to Ruco and his wife after all the damage she had caused, and realising she would never win Ruco's heart. What the actual f?

Ruco's onscreen wife Jinny also has her own romance issues as well outside of being jealous. Due to some circumstances, she ends up meeting her pop idol played by Edmond Leung, and suddenly ends up competing in a singing competition where he is one of the judges. He becomes her mentor later as well, causing Ruco to become insanely jealous. When we think things get really bad, Jinny makes the decision to give up the competition for the sake of her husband and family, which I thought was a huge move in trying to save her marriage. This makes Ruco looks like a huge a**hole, even after he decides to tell her she can continue to compete. This doesn't mean Jinny doesn't have her bad moments, she made a couple of romance analogies that made no sense. The one that triggered me the most was her explaining how marriage was like having a song list of favourite songs and when you get married you can only listen to one song on repeat for the rest of your life. No, marriage is not like a song, that is nonsense because a song only describes one emotion at that moment in time, marriage to a person you love is full of many emotions and memories.

There were many other romance issues the other characters encounter, but Ruco and Jinny's issues pretty much takeover the 2nd half of the drama that it becomes all encompassing and it just drags the show down into the dirt. And that guy Marco Lo who wanted to get revenge, did he do anything else later in the drama to make things interesting? Maybe try to undermine Ruco to spice up the drama? No! He pretty much just scolds Ruco in a few company meetings, and right at the end of the drama - out of nowhere - decides to be nice to Ruco and help him out. That came out of nowhere and made no sense, a massive waste of potential tension between these characters.

And the final scene... oh man. Tony Hung gets the final scene as he finally admits his feelings for his friend and confesses to her, and she agrees. Yay, everybody is happy and they start hugging, then the entire family appears, the camera zooms out to see the entire family but one person is missing. Ruco and Jinny are back together, Tony Hung gets with his girl, but the sister Joey Thye was all alone despite getting with her man. Why was the guy missing? Wasn't this a full family shot to end the drama? Why was one person missing?

Please stop this TVB.

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An explosive start, this is great!

This sequel drama continues directly from the last drama and it kicks off with a lot of action and awesome stunts! If you wondered where all the budget from “In Bed With A Stranger” went, it all went here to this drama, and you can tell because of all the action and special effects used here.

I have watched up to episode 3 and Ruco Chan is still separated from Rosina Lin, and you can see how pathetic he was trying to get her back. I am calling this now, Rosina is going to start dating this Professor played by Alex Fong later, and then eventually Alex Fong is revealed to have some dark background and connection to the dark web and terrorism so she breaks up with Alex Fong and gets back with Ruco. This is the typical TVB formula so I am calling it now. I really hope Rosina doesn’t stay with Alex because they are not a good match as a couple.

For now, all good!

Episode 9: so far so good but this episode brought in something that had me laughing so hard! The police go into a home and take somebody there down to the station. While at the home, they spot a triangular computer on the floor with all these RGB fans and you can see it is air cooled with what I think was a Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212. While interviewing the suspect for some possible cybercrime, Terence Tung said something that made me laugh so hard. He says to the suspect, “We spotted in your home a PC that appeared to be as fast and as powerful as the police supercomputer.” I’m sorry but has anybody on the TVB production team ever seen a supercomputer? They are a huge mammoth cluster of racks that require a huge datacenter to set up and have running with huge power demands. And TVB expects us to believe something like that, which a Police force should have, was replicated in a single tiny PC case with a single CPU and powered by a single PSU? I know they say PCs run faster with more RGB lights but come on! Maybe the Police supercomputer is really just a single consumer machine running a Ryzen 9 CPU with a ton of RGB fans?

And what I found hilarious was how the guy who was arrested was hinted in being one of the best computer scientists around and worked on an encryption algorithm that had not been deciphered in the drama. Do you wanna bet that guy is also a hacker? There is this strange belief that if someone can do computer science and/or program they are automatically knowledgeable in the arts of hacking.

Episode 14: man this episode made me feel really bad for Ruco Chan, I mean that guy cannot catch a break! We see how pathetic he had been living for the 3 months after breaking up with Rosina with the eating alone at home and the avoiding alcohol thing. I know the Ruco curse is still active so there is a chance he won’t get back with Rosina if TVB are feeling like assholes, but this episode just made me feel so bad for him when Rosina said “sorry but we can’t be friends, let’s just be colleagues” after Ruco went all out and said he would wait for her.

Episode 15: lol wtf? This episode made me laugh so hard. So Crystal’s boyfriend is the super smart Computer Science banking nerd that cops wrongly arrested and funnily said his desktop PC was as powerful as the Police supercomputer. Well in this episode he is helping the cops try to find out who this weird Darkweb guy called Perseus was. He even roped in Crystal to help him do some “hacking” to detect when Perseus would send cryptocurrency to some mercenaries and intercept it. What made me laugh was how Crystal’s Computer genius boyfriend’s reply to every problem the cops raised was “oh yeah I can download some software for that” or “yeah I can get a program for that.” Like dude, ain’t you like some hotshot hacker lord, why are your solutions all off-the-shelf stuff you can buy? What were you planning? Installing Microsoft Office 365 and writing an Excel macro on their supercomputer? What’s extra hilarious was how he requested to use the cops supercomputer to do the processing and the cops were like “sure dude, install your shit on there”. That’s not good practice, and doesn’t he have his own desktop PC supercomputer at home? I'm calling this now. Crystal's boyfriend is going to die. I can feel my TVB trope senses tingling.

Episode 21: man what an episode. So Crystal Fung’s old Venezuelan orphanage friend, played by Sheldon Lo, who we get to know in earlier episodes turned out to be a “bad guy”, but I found myself really supporting him. He was smart, calm, and a great strategist, so much so that he found out his boss was going to double cross him so he found a way to turn it around back on his boss. He is also shown to be a great marksman doing incredible firearms action in this episode. Later, as he was about to escape on a yacht, Ruco catches up and was about to arrest him when these assassins turn up and they are forced to work together to survive. It was a great scene and showed that the guy was not that bad and he really was the anti-hero type and it suited him. He had that handsome look with a rebellious nature about it that suited the anti-hero vibe. Later we find out he escaped to Mexico and joined a new crime syndicate for protection so I got excited that we may see him again, but soon we get a one month flash forward and Crystal is at a church lighting a candle for someone, and it turned out our anti-hero died off screen in a fire fight in Mexico. TVB did our guy dirty, such a great character just unceremoniously killed offscreen. I hope he get more roles like this in future because he was great.

Episode 23: ouch Crystal’s boyfriend is in a coma because he had an allergy reaction to bromide gas. Alex orchestrated the entire thing because the boyfriend was, again, aiding the cops in decrypting Alex’s darkweb messages. This would be quite a blow to the cops EXCEPT our expert computer science genius oursourced a lot of the work to his Decryption Association Group he was a part of as he couldn’t decrypt it on his own. This was so stupid because usually Police would not just easily allow such a thing to occur as it was highly classified work, they would have to interview individuals and have them work at the Station to ensure confidentiality, instead here this guy goes “hey can I send this confidential stuff online to my buddies at the Association to help?” And the cops go “sure dude”. If it was that easy, why even ask the boyfriend to help in the first place? As he is in a coma I am going to say he won’t die because if TVB wanted him to die it would have been immediate.

Episode 24: we finally get to see Alex Fong develop romantic feelings for Rosina after they keep running into each other. Alex, after seeing Rosina holding photos of Ruco and hearing from Crystal how they still have feelings for each other, decide to go the petty pathetic route of attempting to shame Ruco out of his career so he wouldn’t have a chance with Rosina anymore. Like who does that? It is such a childish thing to do. If anything I bet this would bring Ruco and Ruco back together again.

Episode 25: okay so it seems Ruco loses his court battle thanks to the machinations of Alex Fong, this results in Ruco going to prison for 28 months. Ruco going to prison and framed for monetary theft was just heart breaking, but we see the beginnings of Rosina starting break out of her shell and show immense concern for Ruco. Oh man, they are gonna get back together for sure. I was wrong about Rosina and Alex getting together, I’ll admit that and with only 5 episodes left there is a very low possibility of it happening now so my guess now is that Alex is going to get rejected by Rosina and Alex won’t understand why because he is such a childish shithead, then most likely would have her kidnapped because that’s what creeps do. Let’s see.

Final update: man the last 5 episodes were a rollercoaster. We saw how Ruco was exonerated so he was let out of prison along with the experience bringing him and Rosina back together again. This was great! But on the other hand you how really stupid scenes like Jonathan Cheung escaping prison without outside assistance purely by chance. They were transporting him to hospital when suddenly a black dog in the road causes the driver to swerve off and crash and Johnny took the opportunity to escape. That was so unearned and cheap that it felt insulting.

We then get Alex planning all these terrorist stuff and right at the last minute he calls off the plan because - and get this - he discovered love. Wtf?

Right near the end we find out that Johnny had set up a dirty nuclear bomb on the roof of a skyscraper, and that getting too close to it would give the people such high levels of radiation poisoning they would die in 5 minutes. Ruco and Ben have everybody evacuate and then decide who would disarm it with a coin toss. I thought TVB were going to kill off Ruco so the curse was in full effect, but suddenly out of the blue, Alex arrives and says he would disarm the bomb as a way of atonement for his previous actions. Of course, they let him because the main characters can’t die, and Alex deactivates the bomb before succumbing to the radiation. I didn’t care about Alex dying though, the guy killed his dad so when he died I just said, “good”.

The ending was quite a happy one and I am glad Ruco got a happy ending, a proper happy ending, in a serious drama. It is a shame they ruined it with some really silly choices in where the story was going. Overall score is a 7.5 as the silly scenes pulled it down slightly, but still a great rewatch drama for sure.

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Movie is terrible

I watched this movie and found it terrible. There were some scary moment for sure, but even before we get to the scary parts there is a really confusing tripping intro to the movie where our protagonist is working out how to deal with his girlfriend's death. This was a clusterf*** of nonsense until we get to the hiking trip.

The only actor worth a s*** was David Chiang as he had some real complex backstory that actually had me routing for him, even when his ultimate decision was the massacre of the entire village and kill his daughter's rapist before having his body split into different wine urns. That was some dark stuff, but I can understand and even sympathise with why he did it. The other characters that went on the hike and got tangled up in this mess I really didn't care about, and of course they give the main protagonist the power to see ghosts. Convenient yo.

It ends with everybody dying and the the evil ghost end boss is still floating around, so basically nothing is really rectified. Terrible

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Great action movie but has a weak plot point

Man I love movies with Andy Lau and Sean Lau in them, it is guaranteed to be an exciting film and this one is surely one of those films that had a lot of action with many explosions. The premise of the story is that Andy Lau and Sean Lau are both bomb disposal experts working with the police, but during one event, Andy gets his leg blown off and so is unable to take part in active duty of bomb disposal. Refusing to settle for a desk job, he publicly protests his treatment during an award event when he was to get an ward for his bravery, and then quits his job.

Some time later he was found at a scene where there was a bomb planted, and he manages to get injured in the blast and lose his memory. Yes, it is the old amnesia plot that leads to Andy redeeming himself later in the movie. The action and acting were great but the biggest weakness was in the plot, which just stands out too much for my liking. What happened was that Andy Lau became so disillusioned with his treatment after getting his leg destroyed (people pitying him and not allowing him dispose bombs) that he decided to start a terrorist organisation to bomb key strategic locations in Hong Kong. Like what the actual f, how did “oh no my leg is blown off” escalate to “f Hong Kong Police and Hong Kong, Imma plant bombs yo!”

And boy, despite needing a prosthetic leg, Andy Lau was running and jumping and doing crazy parkour as if his leg was never lost on the first place. Like seriously, if he can do all that the Police should have kept him in active bomb disposal duty. I mean it would cost less fuel to get him to the location as he would be lighter, he wouldn’t lose that leg again if a bomb went off and he wouldn’t have started that terrorist cell in the first place.

Only the action and acting from Andy and Sean keep this movie afloat, everything else was a bit meh.

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Was expecting more

I am a huge fan of the original anime, so when this was announced for Netflix I was hyped!

And then it was released.

Dammit, I wanted to like it so much but the Netflix series ruined a lot of the good stuff with the anime. I liked the actor playing Yusuke, he was likeable, but they took huge liberties with the story to squeeze as much as they could into 5 episodes. They took many of the beginning arcs and stripped them down and tried to squeeze them into 5 episodes. Why? Was it a budget thing? They completed skipped some important character development arcs such as the Genkai Tournament, the 4 Saint Beasts, and the best arc the Dark Tournament. For example, instead of Yusuke earning a place as Genkai’s student, he is just taken to her home in the mountains and starts training.

The action scenes were really good for sure, but they butchered all the great character development and stories that made Yu Yu Hakusho great to begin with.

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This is a great comedy drama! Worth rewatching!

I watched this when it came it first came out but never wrote a review about it as I was busy at the time, but as I have recently watched it again I can safely say this is one great comedy drama that is worth rewatching!

I usually don’t like watching martial art period dramas, but this one is obviously a parody of those kinds of dramas and somehow manages to make it hilarious in the process. For you to really enjoy it, you’d need to understand all the meta references it throws at you, and laugh at the old spins on modern technology such as paper scrolling lyrics on their take of a karaoke machine. There are also so many great Cantonese puns that you would miss out on if you do not understand the language. Whoever came up with 首振鎮個鎮守 was a genius, I always smile whenever it gets mentioned. This drama just kept throwing them at you that it was a non-stop laugh fest when you’re watching it and you get it.

This is also one of the rare dramas where I did not dislike anybody in it. Even Jeannie Chan, who was awful in The Beauty of War, was pretty funny and likeable as the aggressive and amnesiac Princess, who was constantly shouting at her fiancé, Kalok Chow. By far the best part of the drama was watching the 3 amigos Kalok Chow, Brian Chu and Jonathan Cheung interacting and just being really stupid. I liked them all individually with Kalok’s weak body but fast talking style, Brian’s terrible aptitude for martial arts that causes him to develop a mental condition, and Jonathan as the really stupid but massively hilarious idiot of the three who spouts some real nonsense. When the three of them are onscreen at the same time, you can guarantee there would be some pure TV comedy gold.

What are you waiting for? Go watch it! Hopefully the sequel/prequel comes out for it soon because I am hyped!

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Just watch the original

This is a remake of the original that had the legendary Julian Cheung, Steven Ma, Charmaine Sheh and Nancy Sit. Here we have… yeah…

The remake sucks. This is the short version of the review. The best thing about the drama is the music, but this is only because it is a cover of the original song, sang by Hubert Wu. There is also a cover version where Hubert sang the cover with his co-stars Regina Ho and Joey Law, and let’s just say you should stick with the Hubert only version because those two cannot sing. Hot dang they cannot sing.

The story almost follows the original beat for beat except that it is based in Hong Kong and has a variety of changes to keep things “fresh”, but honestly it is terrible. Hubert does well as the mute Man Cho and Mai Suet was great as Sa Kiu, but holy crap what were the casting crew doing putting Regina Ho as Kwan Ho and Joey Law as Sito Lai Sun? They are just awful! Especially Joey Law, that guy has one expression that he uses in every role he has been in and it gets real old real fast. It is like watching a wooden board flopping in the wind every time he was onscreen; I’ve seen more emotion coming from a pomelo than from him.

I found Charmaine’s Kwan Ho annoying in the original series and put up with it because it was offset with the always charming Julian Cheung, but here Regina’s Kwan Ho was just goddamn unbearable. She was better outfitted than the original character for sure, but her high pitch whiney voice and acting just got on my nerves. She made Charmaine’s Kwan Ho look like a Goddess.

Some of the changes were things I wanted in the original like Kwan Ho not being with Sito Lai Sun and instead staying and being with Man Cho, but one of the changes was a massive sin against the original and I will never rewatch this drama again because of it. Man Cho manages to regain his ability to speak in the original, and he does so here as well with Hubert speaking about 2/3 the way through, but while the original kept his ability to speak, the remake decided to give Man Cho sudden throat cancer - wtf - so he had to go mute again. They did Man Cho real dirty here and I found it inexcusable. I think the TVB writers were trying to balance the “you get Kwan Ho but you must lose your voice” but I think that’s bullshit. Man Cho already had a tragic back story, he didn’t need that extra blow. No, this remake can get stuffed

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What a messy drama

This drama’s only saving grace is Pakho Chau. The handsome owner of a cafe who is charismatic and friendly and awesome. Even when he goes into his vigilante mode to kill what he sees as bad people or “bad bugs”, I kinda found myself rooting for him. He already made the drama a 8/10, but then oh boy… the problems mount up like wtf.

The female lead is played by Venus Wong and her story is pretty sad, but I find her heighten senses and how she controlled them a little unbelievable. To dampen her powers she eats a ton of sweets, and to awaken them she drinks a lemon and salted water concoction. How in earth can she do this for years without suffering from diabetes or high blood pressure is beyond me, but the most ridiculous part is how - with her powers - she can walk into a room where a crime had happened and *feel* what happened there with the residual emotions left behind. She can get into the role of the victim or the perpetrator and deduce the perpetrator with said emotions. I kept on thinking: come on yo, if we wanted a superhero drama we would watch one, what is this? And of course, to force the tension, TVB had her paired with vigilante Pakho so he was constantly having to do this “hide emotions” thing or else she would sense his “evil” side and expose him. A predictable move and I saw it coming a mile away. The only other interesting characters for me was Jinny Ng as this really manipulative and vindictive bitch of a woman who tried to play with the people around her to see how far she could push people to do her bidding, and Mark Ma as this misunderstood working class loudmouth who actually had a heart of gold and was almost a victim of Pakho.

The writing I found was quite messy and the stories do not meld together well enough to form a cohesive whole. It just feels like lumps of stories thrown together at a wall and the screenwriters were hoping the main actors would keep the whole thing together, but it just doesn’t really work.

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Disappointing

As this was a Youku joint production with TVB, I knew to expect the typical Youku grim-dark grey sombre tone they love to slather all over their dramas, and yes, it's here. As soon as episode 1 started, it was just full of pure grim-dark seedy Hong Kong undertones.

I don't hate this drama at all, don't get me wrong. It has Moses Chan as a terminal cancer sufferer who was locked up for drug dealing, and after over a decade in prison,wants to spend his last remaining time alive dealing even more drugs. Then we have Nancy Wu being this strange shades-of-grey character that has us guessing if she is helping Moses or not. Then we have the police officer played by Edwin Siu, who has mild brain damage so is unable to feel emotions properly, which really frustrates his ex-girlfriend played by Kelly Cheung, who still has feelings for him. It is all great acting and I enjoyed it a lot. What ruins the entire drama is Matthew Ho's character and how some of the writing just makes no darn sense.

Oh yeah, there will be spoilers, so just warning you.

Matthew Ho plays this mute food delivery guy that communicates using Hong Kong sign language. This was great, I thought, because we wouldn't have to hear Matthew speaking, because I do find his acting rather terrible. He always plays the same role of "oblivious idiot is oblivious", but they added voiceovers spoken by him to let us know what he is saying anyway. That's pretty normal for mute characters on TVB though, so that is not my complaint. My complaint is that it seems every single person, for reasons unknown, cares a lot about him a lot for NO REASON. It makes no sense why they all care about him so much as there were no events that had Matthew do stuff to make them indebted to him. Instead, they just somehow slowly grew protective of him over the course of the drama, and I kept wondering if I had missed any episodes where these people owed him... but no!

For example, Rosita Kwok's character grew up with him so her caring about him I understand, but later we see the reporter Bowie Cheung suddenly caring a lot about him. Why? And then we had Moses Chan's Man Wah who meets him once after Nancy Wu introduced them, and then suddenly - out of the blue - Moses claims he treats Matthew like family and wants to give him all this stuff to help him. Why did that happen and when? And everybody learns sign language in record time to be able to read his hand signs.

And the thing that broke the character for me was when his kid sister was kidnapped and is later accidentally killed due to a plan gone wrong. The cause is related to Moses and yet somehow Matthew - who knew Moses was involved - is completely okay with the guy and even speaks to him soon after while calling him a friend. Dude... your sister died because of that man, what is wrong with you?

One great thing about the drama though is the great main theme song. Dang, that is one cool canto metal track, but it can't make me put the score higher than a 6 out of 10 overall. Matthew Ho ruins it.

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A great drama!

Yes it has all the typical forced and contrived relationship nonsense in there but man I really liked this drama. I loved the odd combination of Rosina Lam and Kalok Chow, but it works. I also loved David Chiang turning up in his Al Cappuccino role for a a few minutes and then immediately putting him into the dad role, that was unexpected but quite lighthearted fun.

The pets they used were really well trained. In the entertainment business it is said that there are two things you should try to avoid giving dialogue if possible, very young children and animals, and yet here the animals were great especially the golden retriever. But what I found really weird was how all the animals could understand each other, a dog could chat to a cat and parrot, and yet cannot understand human speech. If we as humans cannot understand foreign languages then how do animals of different species understand each other? The Chinese do have the saying “duck and chicken talking” meaning they speak but so not understand each other, so I found it really weird. The dubbing is also weird as the animals do not move their mouths, almost as if it was telepathy.

The thing that made me laugh the most was how the golden retriever was said to have the mental acuity of a child, maybe 5 years old, but somehow in its dubbed dialogue it can throw out profound and complex poetry, and yet on the other hand doesn’t know what a flip phone is. This just adds to the ridiculousness of the entire show and it was hilarious.

I recommend this show purely for the silliness or if it all, and the show knows it is silly and embraces it.

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A law drama I actually like? What?

I am not usually a fan of law dramas, there is usually too much legalese and stuff in them that get really boring no matter who acts in it because it can sometimes feel like it is shoving law knowledge at the viewer without their consent, but this drama is completely different. Instead, the focus is on the human relations and the important ties each person has, which effects the decisions made in a court of law. It does not overuse the court scenes and puts in just enough to make each case entertaining to watch as the lawyers battle it out, with Kenneth Ma handing over yellow notes to help push his side to winning the case.

Once again, Kenneth Ma is outstanding here as a highly talented legal executive who approaches his cases in unconventional ways but within the bounds of the law, and coming up with solutions to difficult situations. I really loved watching him act here, making it his 2nd great TV drama this year right after The Invisibles.

Kenneth has a group of 3 other friends he hangs around with, played by Rosina Lam, Jonathan Cheung and Stephen Wong. These guys have been through so much together since their days at law school and we get to see their camaraderie feel like a really real thing as the drama progresses. Who really stood out here was Stephen Wong as I was so tired of seeing him act as the boring, serious, sour-face guy in most of the dramas I see him in. Name one drama where he has been outgoing, obnoxious and friendly, and I can promise you nothing would come to mind until this drama came out. Seeing him as this smiling, laughing, hugely annoying yet endearing guy was a welcome role change for the guy, and he does a great job portraying a massively talented lawyer.

Even Jonathan Cheung has his moments here as well. He is the very sensible and very well-behaved prude of the group but instead of coming off as annoying and boring, he was actually quite entertaining to watch, especially the awkward exchanges between him and his love interest, a strict judge played by Joman Chiang. Watching Joman go from stern judge to being a little bit girly from her interactions with Jonathan was great, but their love story takes seconds place compared to Kenneth and Rosina's.

The romantic tension between Kenneth and Rosina was the best in the drama. They both clearly are attracted to each other but the timing has always been off with Kenneth constantly finding obstacles between him getting with the girl of his dreams. He even decided that deep down it was God telling him that they could not be together so he resigned himself to that fate. But as per many TVB dramas, they do eventually end up together and the build up to it was fantastic as it led to one very touching moment when they finally embraced. The only weird thing about their relationship while they were together was that they never kissed onscreen,. Did their spouses send them a "no kissing allowed" ultimatum? One thing that I do have to call out is Rosina daydreaming about Raymond Lam, who is Rosina's cousin is real life, so it came off as a little creepy and weird.

Overall a great drama to watch and I highly recommend it. It even has a really catchy main theme song that sticks in your head long after each episode is over. The only major thing to ruin it was the repeated overplaying of the great song "Friends For Life" by Ekin Cheng. It is so overused while watching this that I have grown to really hate the song and have to skip it whenever it comes up on my personal music playlist. A great song ruined by overzealous use in this drama.

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What happened?

Part 1 had its problems and was not bad as it had a real gripping ending, but part 2… what were the writers thinking?

I don't know how important CSAT exams are, but this exam is one of the driving plot points of part 2. What makes no sense is that humanity faces extinction and yet all these kid could think about was getting into college. I am sure there are more important things to worry about than college entry at a time like that. This becomes such a central plot point that one of the characters literally goes insane after finding out the 2023 CSAT exams were cancelled and were to be held in 2024. This leads to the drama ending not to a final showdown against the alien threat, but the final boss being this kid who has gone insane and had somehow activated god-mode in his final rampage.

The ending was anti-climatic and skips ahead to 2024 where humanity has wiped out 99% of the menace so had the threat under control. Okay... so we are supposed to imagine the final desperate struggle and not be shown it? Instead we were given teenaged angst drama with automatic rifles? Sure.

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An amazingly touching story

I did not have any idea what I would be watching when I watched this movie, but I did not expect to end up feeling the way I did at the end of it. I really liked this film and it tells its story extremely well.

This movie is based on the true life events of a couple of blind parents who decided to have a baby together and raise the baby. They have a daughter and the daughter can see just fine, but the hardships they all go through were really tangible and it constantly pulled at my heart strings. The first scene in the movie really sets the tone for the entire movie, you’ll have to watch it to understand but let’s just say I won’t be leaving my rice cooker electrical cables hanging off the side.

Kara Wai and Hugo Ng were really great in their roles as the mother and father, especially Kara as she had the mannerisms mastered in a way that had me convinced she was blind. Even the eye movements were eerily accurate. She is an over-protective mother in a time when there were no mobile phones and blind people didn’t have as many technological advancements we take for granted today, and I just loved her performance. Hugo Ng had an easier time as he had his eyes closed the entire movie, but you can see how he tries to uphold his own sense of self-worth and dignity while trying to earn money for his family. The scenes where the husband and wife interact were very touching and really felt like a couple who had been married and in love for decades.

Karena Ng plays the teenaged daughter and I thought she did a fantastic job in the role. She doesn’t want people knowing she has blind parents in fear of being bullied about it, and she cannot really mingle with her friends properly because of the responsibilities given to her as the seeing daughter of blind parents. The conflicts between these aspects of her life coupled with teenaged hormones made for some intense scenes when it all comes to a head.

Overall, this is a great movie. It won’t be for everybody that’s for sure, but I really loved the family aspect it brings and that genuinely, in the end, family really does matter.

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