Reviews

A Shaw Bros Spaghetti Western

With the dusty, fatalistic vibe of a spaghetti western disguised as Shaw Brothers swordplay and blessed with an incredible black-and-white opening sequence, you'd be forgiven for thinking that The Flying Dagger would be a rape revenge tale lead by a female swordswoman; what you get instead is Lo Lieh wandering into town like a wuxia Clint Eastwood, throwing knives with absurd accuracy and looking cooler than everyone else in the room. It's certainly an impressive bait-and-switch, opting instead to deal with the internal struggle between good and evil that exists within all of us, where honour and chivalry often carry little weight in the world. Chang Cheh's direction already shows his growing fascination with violence, sacrifice and masculine heroism, hallmarks of his later works. The action is relatively brief but frequent, often punctuated by the deadly precision of thrown knives and colourful villains. Lo Lieh is always a great watch, dominating the screen with his effortlessly charming if not entirely noble persona, Yeung Chi Hung makes for a wonderfully nasty villain, cackling wildly and throwing daggers with absolute precision into his foe's limbs or torso as he sees fit, while Cheng Pei-Pei, who, despite headlining, unfortunately takes a backseat, barely getting a chance to break into action, is shackled to the tortured woman in love stereotype. It means that the third act is bogged down when the romantic sub-plot takes precedence over the film's main drive of loneliness, belonging and redemption. Still, the stylish camerawork and snappy pace mean that The Flying Dagger soon gets back on track, delivering just the right kind of heroic sacrifice and blood-soaked righteousness you'd expect.

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Ehhh

Danger Dolls flirts with high concept ideas but, regrettably, never commits. Its world and premise are mildly interesting at best, yet the film does little with them, leaving both its themes and characters underdeveloped.

The action is solid enough, but without emotional investment, it lacks impact. Combined with a noticeable but underutilized low budget, the film ends up feeling like a generic action movie rather than a thoughtful sci fi story.

It is not bad, just underwhelming. You can see the better version of this film, but it never fully comes together.

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Surprisingly Decent

My expectations were very low, as I came in thinking it's gonna be a slop film, I mean, I still think it is, but it's a decently packaged movie.

The story can be generic, depending on your viewpoint. I thought it was gonna be a full-on horror, but it's not, there are some mild horror elements here and there, though it's more like Action/Mystery. I wasn't expecting any romance, but there is, though they didn't give it more depth, and that's okay, but to be honest, I did feel butterflies in my stomach when they gave us romantic scenes.

Acting is good from the leads. There are some characters that are very generic, but they mesh well with the Main characters.

I watched this on WeTV youtube channel and the music was god awful, though i can understand why because its to avoid music copyrights.

CGI was okay, it can be janky, but at this point at seen a lot of chinese media with janky 3D effects, so i'm already desensitized to it at this point, so long as it doesn't deteriorate my watch experience. I'm just all for the vision that they're trying to show.

Overall, decent film. Like it or not, its up to you.

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All Hype, No Horror, Waste of Time

This movie ended up being the epitome of all hype and no payoff. The real jump scare was discovering that this was the film everyone had been raving about, especially given its massive success in Korea. It's really a meh for me. Maybe horror is subjective, but the TikTok reviews promising nonstop jump scares had me seriously questioning whether we had watched the same movie. I didn't even flinch when the ghosts showed up. The biggest disappointment, however, was the story. The plot raises more questions than it answers, it gives us nothing.

The cast was solid and did what they could with the material they were given, which only makes the wasted potential even more frustrating. I actually loved the promotions, but they ended up feeling like false promises. What puzzles me the most is how this movie managed to become one of Korea's highest-grossing horror films. Maybe my standards for horror are just wildly out of sync with the general Korean audience. If you want horror that truly delivers, I'd recommend checking out Thai, Indonesian, and Japanese horror films.

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Wacky, Unhinged, totally enjoyable fun

I absolutely loved this short story. Storyline is very fresh, creative and different from anything I have seen in a great while. I truly love the characters and were laughing a lot throughout the whole film. The storyline threw me a bit with the unexpected twist of how the ML actually lost his memories along with seeing ducks.
What started out as a very funny, quirky story turned into a more meaningful love story and a lesson of tolerance in a relationship when two people truly love each other. Fantastic production with a hugely talented young cast. Bravo!! Highly recommend this creative gem.

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The heart hears everything

See Hear Love* is a touching and heartfelt Japanese romance that explores love, loss, and the ways people connect beyond words. The story follows a manga artist who is gradually losing his sight and a woman who is deaf, bringing together two people facing very different challenges yet finding understanding and comfort in one another.

What makes this film special is its focus on communication, trust, and emotional connection rather than relying on dramatic twists. The relationship develops naturally, allowing viewers to become invested in the characters and their journey. The lead actors deliver sincere performances that make the emotions feel genuine and relatable.

The film handles themes of disability with sensitivity, showing both the struggles and strengths of its characters. Rather than defining them by their limitations, it highlights their determination, courage, and capacity for love.

Visually, *See Hear Love* is beautifully filmed, with many quiet moments that speak louder than words. The emotional scenes are both tender and heartbreaking, creating a story that stays with viewers long after it ends.

Overall, *See Hear Love* is a moving romance about acceptance, hope, and finding light in life's darkest moments. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys emotional love stories that focus on human connection, personal growth, and the power of understanding one another.

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I saw the original version back in the ’90s while following Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s filmography and it was my first encounter with Wong Kar-wai. I didn’t know who he was at the time nor the fact that this was an insane cast, and although I forgot much of the movie, the lingering feeling it left me with after it ended has stayed with me to this day.

This past month I’ve had the opportunity to revisit WKW’s work, and I came across this 2008 Redux version (edited to correct year), in which the director rearranged certain elements. While watching it, I realized that all the scenes had remained fresh in some dark chamber of my mind, because as they appeared on screen, the memories came flooding back — yet I still couldn’t predict the following scenes. Quite an experience!

Now, with more knowledge of Chinese and Eastern culture in general, I realize this is WKW’s version of how Eastern Heretic, Western Venom, and Northern Beggar came to be, and I have even less doubt than before that Xu Bing is a great admirer of Wong Kar-wai. Having seen the trailer for his upcoming Remnants of Gold, I can clearly see the homage to Ashes of Time.

Another director who, I can tell, has liked Wong Kar-Wai filmography is Yu Xiaochen, the director of Back to the Origin, who must also admire Christopher Doyle’s cinematography, as he worked as a cinematographer himself before making his directorial debut.

And it also turned out that I did know Jacky Cheung from his glorious days — I just didn’t realize it lol.

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Pure exploitative vindication

Pure exploitative vindication. Possibly one of the worst pieces of shit I've ever had the displeasure of viewing, Bruceploitation was already a subgenre I had a huge discomfort with, but Bruce Lee and I has taken that to a whole different level. An intimate portrait of Betty Ting Pei's illicit love affair with Bruce Lee, told from the perspective of the world's neediest sympathy sponge, it's a downright sickening production. Cheap at every turn, it's a sleazy mix of gossip, melodrama and outright fabrication; every scene is designed to exploit Lee's fame rather than celebrate what made him such a magnetic screen presence in the first place. It's only really worth a vague glance to see Danny Lee as Bruce Lee; other than that, we'd be better off burning every available copy. I feel no sympathy for Betty.

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Old-school wuxia comedy with a glossy post-handover makeover

An old-school wuxia comedy with a glossy post-handover makeover, The Duel bounces between political conspiracies, mistaken identities, romance, comedy and increasingly absurd action sequences with enough CGI and star power to light up Victoria Harbour. It's less like a straight martial arts film than a variety show built around the promise of a sword fight that never comes. It's very much a hybrid effort, and the comedy is ill at ease with the heavy drama that occurs later on, but credit to Director Andrew Lau because, for the most part, the film is utterly gorgeous with plenty of soft colour and wonderful scale. The uneven silliness and fluid fight choreography are ultimately a victim of the incomprehensible editing, and unfortunately, it all kind of falls apart when paired with the comedic writings of Wong Jing and the hyper robotic leading performance from Nick Cheung, looking fairly ridiculous with dreadlocks and a pencil moustache. He lacks a well-defined comic persona, coming across as more annoying than entertaining, but here his presence is strangely welcome as it looks like he is at least enjoying lampooning the straight-faced drama. Andy Lau is always a welcome presence, and I kinda love Vicki Zhao, but, for the most part, The Duel is a rather middling but glossy affair. Messy, overstuffed, but reminiscent of other early nineties wuxia comedies.

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Fear, hope and disillusionment

A sequel from an entirely different genre and taking the gritty bleakness of the series into overdrive, Long Arm of the Law IV is cut from a completely different cloth, abandoning the robbery-centred plots of earlier instalments and instead acting as a highly incendiary response to the Tiananmen Square massacre. There's a reason this hasn't seen a re-release since its VCD, one I ultimately imagine is down to a narrative based on Operation Yellowbird, the extremely bold use of footage of the Tiananmen Square protests, and it's far from subtle recreations of the events with a horrifically high body count to boot. Rather than thriving on momentum and carefully orchestrated chaos, Director Michael Mak instead goes for restless, messy but ultimately ambitious storytelling, and I respect him for that. It's an exceptionally bold piece of filmmaking, even if it feels as if they've had to make a compromise to avoid the Category III rating. There's a genuine sense of displacement and uncertainty, portraying characters caught between political realities and the false promise of escape. Hong Kong is no longer the glamorous refuge it might appear to be from across the border; it's another hostile landscape where survival comes at a cost. The action scenes are effective, though they're not the main attraction. What lingers is the atmosphere, the paranoia, the exhaustion and the sense that every character is running toward a future that may not exist. Bolstered by some outstanding performances and Joseph Chan's incredible music, Long Arm of the Law IV remains a highly compelling action thriller, not because it delivers bigger action or higher stakes than its predecessors, but because it captures fear, hope and disillusionment with a brutal honesty, ending the saga on a deeply pessimistic note.

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Commercial action spectacle over gritty realism

The first two Long Arm of the Law films built their reputation on grit and desperation, with their criminals trapped by circumstance. Long Arm of the Law III takes a drastically different route. It's bigger, louder and far more of a star vehicle that certainly plays to Andy Lau's strengths as both a charismatic hero and romantic leading man. Although it loses the vicious edge, it remains a strong piece of engaging melodrama where one moment it’s a tragic romance about displaced migrants chasing a better future; the next it’s a brutal crime thriller packed with betrayals, gunfights and ruthless gangsters. It sits in a sort of unhappy middle ground where it’s too romanticised to be a full-blown neo-noir, not quite a heroic bloodshed and too glossy to be a hard-edged crime thriller. However, returning director Michael Mak still delivers plenty of grit and determination; his action sequences are excellent, with a climactic stretch, in particular, offering a barrage of bullets, double-crosses, and body counts that feel determined to top everything that came before it with a heist final heist that feels straight out of the Michael Mann playbook. The trade-off is that some of the social realism and bleakness of the earlier films gets diluted with the script occasionally relying on coincidence, broad villainy and emotional manipulation. Yet there's something undeniably entertaining about the film’s emotional excesses, an energetic slice of Hong Kong cinema in its heroic-bloodshed prime. Lau's charisma undoubtedly helps sell the film, but equally is his wonderfully goofy relationship with Elizabeth Lee. The rest of the performances are all pretty great, with highlights from Elvis Tsui, Kirk Wong, Max Mok and a pre-Liu Kang Robin Shou. Although it very much feels like the point where the series fully embraced commercial action spectacle over gritty realism, Long Arm of the Law III is a wonderfully messy and violent slice of fun.

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Fighting fire with fire

Fighting fire with fire, although it never quite escapes the shadow of the original, Long Arm of the Law II is a slicker but no less brutal follow-up that's just as tense, cynical and morally corrosive. It's dog-eat-dog, where violence is simply a routine fact of survival, self-preservation takes precedence when you're in over your head, stuck in increasingly dangerous limbo, where neither fully criminals nor fully accepted by the authorities they serve. It all feels like a decidedly glossier affair, losing the raw unpredictability but retaining the dirty, pessimistic attitudes; it feels lived-in and authentic, aided by some wonderful location shooting and a visual style that often resembles reportage more than conventional genre filmmaking, but with Michael Mak taking over directing duties, it doesn't stop the film from being almost as breathtaking as its predecessor. Shootouts are messy, brutal affairs; panic and desperation are the de facto settings when everything goes wrong. Yes, it does occasionally rely on overly familiar undercover-cop conventions, with the storyline getting a little muddled in the middle due to a surfeit of subplots, but the film delivers absolutely thrilling firepower amid all its barbarity, even stopping for a karaoke number. The cast, led by Alex Man, Elvis Tsui and Ben Lam, gives the film much of its emotional weight, teaching us the ultimate lesson when it comes to being an undercover cop: it sucks, it contributes wonderfully to the film's sense of realism and desperation. Their characters, fish out of water introduced into a capitalist society, this time with a touch more levity, are not idealised heroes but trapped men trying to navigate systems that view them as expendable. Complimented by the usual Hong Kong lax standards when it comes to stunt safety and a fantastic musical score, Long Arm of the Law II is a gritty, unsentimental and relentlessly tense concoction of bombastic firepower and fallout that's certainly not for the fainthearted.

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Brutally visceral

Brutally visceral from beginning to bloody end, Long Arm of the Law speaks volumes about its people and society, exploring how Mainland Chinese in the Bamboo Curtain era desperately desired better opportunities in the colonial-ruled Hong Kong, even if it came at the cost of losing their lives. Everyone has their own personal issues to work through, but this isn't a feel-good, fuzzy film about redemption and ultimate reconciliation. The characters are stymied or even undone by their disassociation with Hong Kong; their success and/or failure hinges on who they are. In the end, they don't affect the situation; it affects them. Every decision pushes the gang deeper into danger, and every attempt to regain control only accelerates their downfall. They are not glamorous antiheroes, but poor, opportunistic men chasing a fantasy of quick wealth, observed with a mixture of sympathy and brutal honesty. Arriving just shy of the heroic bloodshed boom that would soon dominate the landscape, many of the genre's defining traits are already here: desperate criminals, fractured loyalties, explosive violence and a city that seems determined to grind everyone down. Seriously, how on earth has Johnny Mak only ever directed this?! He paints Hong Kong not as a neon playground but as a crowded, chaotic landscape filled with cramped apartments, back alleys, cheap hotels and criminal middlemen. Favouring confusion, panic, and sudden eruptions of violence where gunfights are messy and frightening, while chases feel improvised and desperate. It's utterly mesmerising. Above all, the casting is the major key; from top to bottom, the actors are mainly amateurs, but their performances are starkly real, no doubt helped by the improvisational attitude to some scenes that lend them all a beautiful authenticity. There are no heroes here. There's only a society that loses. A tense, cynical, and deeply atmospheric portrait of men chasing a dream that was doomed from the start, few films feel as raw, influential, or unsettling as Long Arm of the Law.

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