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Paul Fonoroff

Starring: Louis Koo Tin-lok, Rene Liu Ruo-ying, Nora Miao Ke-hsiu
Director: Sylvia Chang Ai-chia
Category: IIA (Cantonese)
Director Sylvia Chang Ai-chia   endows her works with a grace  often lacking in mainstream Hong Kong cinema. Run Papa Run  continues that tradition.  Yet despite an intriguing premise and intelligent performances, Papa's credibility is all but nullified by an excess of cutesiness and a blinkered  view of the  issues facing the female protagonist.
The film  revolves around an odd couple: Mabel (Rene Liu),  a young lawyer, and Lee Tin-yun (Louis Koo Tin-lok; above),  a gangster.  Mabel is the product of an intellectual family headed by a stern professor (Ti Lung)  and his  wife (Amy To Man-ming,  Ti's real-life spouse).  Her  conventional existence is rocked when she meets up-and-coming  mobster Lee,  a charismatic rogue  raised by a gutsy single  mum (Nora Miao Ke-hsiu).  Opposites attract, and the  lawyer and lawbreaker   get together.
The opening stages of the couple's romance are engagingly told from Mabel's lovestruck viewpoint - even to the extent that she  breaks  into song, as if  in a fairy tale.  But the movie,  like Mabel's life,  wobbles when reality  comes barging in.  And that's the trouble with the film:  its reality  comes across as  less believable than its fantasy elements.
The emphasis is on Lee's efforts to be  a 'good father' (the film's Chinese title) to daughter Hei-yee (played as a teenager by Liu Yihan)  while doing his  best to hide from her the nature of his  profession.  This relegates Mabel to  the generic  hinterland of the long-suffering wife and  means the moral and ethical dilemmas  she  faces are largely ignored. After all, she's not only raising her daughter on lies, but also living off ill-gotten gains.  And  perfunctory attempts to  make Lee a more sympathetic character by highlighting his struggle to go straight and his refusal to deal drugs  don't disguise the fact that his wife's problems remain unaddressed.
Also unexplored is Mabel's status as  No3 in the household. It's clear  Lee married her because she was pregnant and  probably would have dumped her long ago if not for his  being a doting dad. But there's little insight into how Mabel copes, apart from some anger when she finds out Lee has been sleeping around. Whether it's on matters of health, scruples or self-esteem, the movie is  oblivious  to the implications of  Mabel's once blind love.
Instead, there's a lot of  time spent on the affected antics of the 'good' gangsters,  and their life-or-death  struggle against a 'bad' mobster (Conroy Chan Chi-chung).
The lack of emotional  depth is compounded by  a cursory  treatment of Hei-yee's conflicting feelings, the  film dwelling instead on her vapid infatuation with a cop's son (Shaun Tam Chun-yin,  the real life son of Hei-yee's screen grandparents).  The problem isn't  that Run Papa Run doesn't  resolve things between  Mabel and Lee, but that  its scriptwriters seem barely aware of the far more interesting questions that might have been asked.
Run Papa Run opens today



Run Papa Run