Bad Blood
Starring: Simon Yam Tat-wah, Bernice Liu Bik-yee, Andy On Chi-kit, Jiang Luxia Director: Dennis Law Sau-yiu Category: IIB (Cantonese)
There's plenty of blood and an abundance of badness in this flamboyant portrait of a crime family with warped DNA. Producer-director-writer Dennis Law has crafted an action-packed saga whose violent-but-generic first hour turns out to be the prelude for shenanigans so over the top the film might well walk off with the prize for guilty pleasure of 2010.
The fluid referred to in the title belongs to the members of the Tung Luen Shun triad, a complex organisation headed by the even more convoluted Lok clan. A family containing a passel of siblings who share the same dad but different mums, it takes half the movie to figure out who is related to whom and how. Then it dawns on one that it doesn't really matter and to just sit back and enjoy the fatal ride.
Possible heirs to the Tung Luen Shun throne include loutish ruffian Funky (Simon Yam), refined heiress Audrey (Bernice Liu), and scarred half-brother Calf (Andy On), to name but a few. Their nefarious deeds are abetted by an oddball group that includes Lam Suet (as a lawyer), Ken Lo Wai-kwong and Chan Wai-man, as - what else? - gangsters, and Wong Tin-lam in a brief cameo where he exudes his usual Buddha-like presence.
Among the women, third wife Mama Ling (octogenarian Candy Hau Woon-ling) is a hoot in a particularly sizzling scene. As the family's dominant personality, Liu similarly rises to the challenge in a portrayal that begins blandly and turns into something much more. But when it comes to action, the mute orphan girl with the unfortunate English name Dumby (Shaolin champion Jiang Luxia, above right with On) is a sight to behold, darting from roof to ledge and continually on the literal edge of grievous harm.
Not surprisingly, when a half-billion-dollar inheritance is at stake, people end up dead. In this regard, Law's latest opus may have the highest mortality rate of any post-handover Hong Kong film, including his own Fatal Contact (2006) and Fatal Move (2008). The violence is unmercifully brutal and totally divorced from reality, the fun provided to a large extent by the inventive martial arts choreography of Nicky Li Chung-chi and expert lensing by Herman Yau Lai-to.