Starring: Jaycee Chan, Angelica Lee Sin-je, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Liu Ruo-yu Director: Kenneth Bi Kwok-chi Category: IIA (Putonghua, Cantonese) Weighty drumbeats with even weightier intellectual undertones fill a drama that uses the gangster genre as an entree into Zen-related performance art. The second big screen feature by director-writer Kenneth Bi, The Drummer offers a fresh perspective on unconventional interpersonal relationships, like his debut film Rice Rhapsody (2004). And like Rice Rhapsody, its laudable intent is at times weakened by a heavy-handedness that overstates the underlying philosophy. This quality is apparent in the opening scene. An artsy stage performance accompanied by pretentious dialogue, the segment segues into the affectedly passionate lovemaking of protagonist Sid (Jaycee Chan) and his latest conquest (Yumiko Cheng Hei-yi), the wife of ruthless gang boss Stephen Ma (Kenneth Tsang Kong). Sid must be one of the most unappealing brats to appear in a Hong Kong production, the spoiled son of hideous triad kingpin Kwan (Tony Leung Ka-fai), who happens to be Ma's chief rival. Just as the prospect of watching Sid for two hours begins to weigh the audience down, the movie takes a felicitously unexpected turn with the youth's exile to Taiwan lest he become Ma's next victim. This is the point at which The Drummer becomes something special, for Sid stumbles upon a troupe of drummers (played by members of Taiwan's U Theatre, a spiritual percussion performance group) whose craft demands a spartan existence and rigid discipline that turns the rebel-without-a-cause into a responsible, if messed-up, adult. One of the film's biggest disappointments is that despite Chan's effective turn, the film lacks the emotional resonance that would allow the viewer to experience Sid's pivotal moment of transformation. The movie works best during its Taiwanese sojourn and depiction of the troupe's routine. The drummers' leader (Liu Ruo-yu), a resolute presence and the benevolent authority figure Sid needs, is so appealing because she is one of the narrative's most unaffected characters. Less so is Hong-dou (Angelica Lee Sin-je, above with Chan), the troupe's tough junior member and the chief object of Sid's lust. Their initial meeting and later interactions are annoying in their conventional predictability, with Lee given little chance naturally to inhabit her role. More successful is the interplay between Sid and Chiu (Roy Cheung Yiu-yeung), an underling ordered by Kwan to look after his son in Taiwan. Cheung portrays Chiu with an uncontrived genuineness that makes the psychotic swaggering of Kwan look synthetic. Kwan is the film's most fantastic personage, animalistic in his instinctive behaviour and savagery. But the posturing often comes across as machinations of a scriptwriter rather than an organic trait. It is a point underlined by the director's endowing various scenes with symbolic flourishes, such as intercutting between Kwan's prison shenanigans and Sid's drumming. The Drummer would have been better served by internalising the troupe's philosophy and not overbeating its own metaphorical drum. The Drummer opens on Oct 11
