SYNOPSIS:
Underwater archeologist, Dave Chen (GUO XIAO DONG)
had hidden an engagement ring in the 10,000 years old ancient
ruins, located off Yonaguni Island. He’s about to propose
to his girlfriend, Jing Gao (LEE SINJIE) underwater, with
it.
During
the dive with Jing Gao, Dave mysteriously disappears without
a trace. His disappearance unleashes a train of events. Heartbroken
and shattered, Jing Gao rapidly spirals off into another world,
haunted by phantoms and apparitions. In desperation, she resorts
to some unusually extreme means to find Dave. As the pieces
of Dave’s disappearance emerge, the truth slips further
and further away.
MOVIE REVIEW:
Once upon a time in the early 1990s, there was a Hong Kong
director who made this reviewer captivated and thrilled whenever
he made a movie about the legendary Huang Fei Hong. The “Once
Upon A Time In China” series was so successful in Hong
Kong cinema history, Jet Li’s character became a celebrated
figure in every Chinese boy’s heart. Then this director
went on to make other films like The Lovers (1994), a heartbreaking
movie starring pop idols Nicky Wu and Charlie Young and Time
and Tide (2000), a violent movie starring pop icons Nicholas
Tse and Wu Bai. Of course, like many other Asian filmmakers,
this one went to cash in at the Hollywood scene and made duds
like Double Team (1997) and Knock Off (1998).
And
the filmmaking master that was Tsui Hark had to churn out
this mess of a movie some 10 odd years on. It really doesn’t
reflect very well on his once renowned status as an acclaimed
director.
The
Chinese title is an intriguing one because it translates into
“looking for someone under the deep seas”. The
synopsis is also interesting enough to make this reviewer
want to see how the story is visualized on celluloid: A man
proposes to his girlfriend hides an engagement ring in the
ancient underwater ruins off Japan's Yonaguni Island. An unfortunate
accident happens and he disappears, leaving the girlfriend
emotionally tormented and psychologically shaken. Like all
thriller dramas, strange things begin to happen and the truth
begins to, pardon the pun here, surface.
Clearly
a poor cousin of movies like Hollywood’s The Sixth Sense
(1999) and Asia’s very own The Eye (2002), Tsui tries
to inject a dose of romantic element into his self written
screenplay by hoping viewers can relate the female protagonist’s
search for her boyfriend in the deep waters to a poetic idea
of seeking for true love in the ocean of endless eternity.
This attempt fails miserably here because the movie cannot
decide whether it wants to be a horror picture (check out
for those scary apparitions!) or a lovelorn flick (listen
out for that graceful theme song!). The result is an overlong
movie which runs at 118 minutes that tests your patience after
half an hour.
To
be fair, the cast does an okay job of looking intense, angst
ridden, disturbed, miserable or determined in the different
scenes. Angelica Lee (Re-cycle, The Drummer) puts on her supernatural
lenses again to see spirits again. Isabella Leong (The Mummy
3, Spider Lilies) manages to turn in a rather creepy performance
while Chang Chen (Red Cliff, Blood Brothers) looks awkwardly
out of place as a psychology patient. The respectable star
studded ensemble is rounded up by Tony Leung (not the one
who got married in Bhutan, it’s the other one who has
won acting awards in Johnnie To’s Election), Chinese
rocker musician Chang Chen Yue and Mainland Chinese actor
Guo Xiaodong.
To
be fair, the movie does boasts of some picturesque underwater
cinematography by Japanese director of photography Yoshitaka
Sakamoto (A Battle of Wits). And the art direction by Kenneth
Mak (Protégé) displays a fair bit of intricacies
and attention to details too. But overall as a movie helmed
by Tsui, this one will go down history as one of the greatest
duds ever made.
SPECIAL
FEATURES:
This Code 3 disc contains no special features.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
After
ranting about how someone like Tsui can make a movie like
this, we don’t really have that many complaints about
the disc’s visual transfer. It is presented in its original
Mandarin soundtrack.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING:
Review by John Li
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