Starring: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Sean Lau Ching-wan, Zhou Xun
Director: Derek Yee Tung-shing
Category: IIA (Cantonese and Japanese)
The 'mainlandification' of Hong Kong cinema reaches new heights in this comedy, so deftly tuned to tastes across the border that the production bears little trace of its Cantonese roots.
It is a mixed blessing for Derek Yee Tung-shing, one of the city's most consistently outstanding directors and an auteur with a special knack for investing his movies with an undeniably local persona. Employing an A-list cast and crew hailing mostly from Hong Kong, Yee has created a first-rate holiday confection tailor-made for the mainland Chinese market and in the process muffles the distinctiveness and individuality that has made his oeuvre so special. The film centres on a buffoonish potentate in the early years of Republican China. 'Bully' Lei (Lau Ching-wan) bears a resemblance to the despot brought to life by Michael Hui Koon-man in his debut, The Warlord (1972), a milestone in local comedy that despite its use of Mandarin was unmistakably Hong Kong in character.
Yee's film is more complex and less idiosyncratic. Lei battles on both political and sexual stages, contending with Japanese imperialists and Qing revivalists while placating jealous Concubine Number Three (Yan Ni) and pursuing Concubine Number Seven (Zhou Xun). As indicated by the title, Lei has a formidable rival in magician Zhang Xian (Tony Leung Chiu-wai, above left with Lau and Zhou), whose prowess as prestidigitator masks his own past with the woman who's about to be the warlord's seventh wife. It is a lot of plot to pack into a comedy, and things get a bit muddled as the final half-hour unspools. Historians might be disconcerted by period inaccuracies, but such qualms are ultimately overridden by the pleasure of watching old pros Leung and Lau once again interacting on screen, for the first time since 1998's The Longest Nite.
The movie is filled with humour and spectacle, with Stephen Tung Wai's action choreography and Yee Chung-man's image design up to their usual high standards. All in all a respectable effort but something of a letdown in relation to the best work by a filmmaker whose unique sense of Hong Kong has resulted in so many pictures brimming with intelligence, perception and heart.
The Great Magician opens today