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Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: John Krasinski
Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe
Runtime: 1 hr 30 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)
Released By: UIP
Official Website:

Opening Day: 5 April 2018

Synopsis: In the modern horror thriller A QUIET PLACE, a family of four must navigate their lives in silence after mysterious creatures that hunt by sound threaten their survival. If they hear you, they hunt you.

Movie Review:

“If they hear you, they hunt you.” That about neatly sums up the high-concept survival horror from John Krasinski, a lean, mean and terrifyingly effective thriller that is viscerally and emotionally gripping.

Working off a nearly dialogue-free script that he co-wrote with Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, Krasinski imagines a post-apocalyptic Earth overrun by lethally fast extraterrestrial creatures that navigate and hunt by sound. In one of the most efficient prologues we’ve seen, Kraskinski introduces us to these large, skittering, carnivorous beasties while establishing the tragedy which would haunt the Abbott family whose fate we will follow throughout the course of the film. We won’t spoil it for you, but suffice to say that this event – which a title card informs us happens on Day 89, of what we presume refers to the number of days since the invasion – provides justifiable context why Lee (Krasinski) and Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) have decided to bring another child into the world when we next catch up with them a year later.

Besides their impending newborn, Lee and Evelyn have two other children: a deaf teenage daughter named Regan (as is the actress who plays her, Millicent Simmonds, of the recent ‘Wonderstruck’) and a younger son Marcus (Noah Jupe). Not surprisingly, their everyday life consists of familiar yet different routines, including collecting fish from cages set along a nearby river, preparing dinner in a steamer under the floor, an after-dinner game of Monopoly using felt cutouts and fuzzy balls (instead of metal and plastic tokens) and communicating with neighbours using firelight after dark. Through immersing us in their minutiae, Krasinski succeeds not just in creating a rich, imaginative and simultaneously credible alternate reality but also in getting us to care for these characters in an intimate, personal and even profound way.

There are more than a couple of memorable scenes here: an impromptu dance between Lee and Evelyn with a shared pair of ear buds playing Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’; a tense exchange between Lee and Regan as the former tries to get the latter to try on his latest makeshift hearing aid; and a learning expedition that Lee brings Marcus on which sees the boy’s initial fear and reluctance of learning the tricks of survival slowly melt away. Using both sign language and meaningful glances, the dynamics among the Abbotts are laid out clearly, succinctly and intently, complemented by some ingenious sound design that emphasizes the atmosphere of lived-in domesticity and omnipresent terror.

Less patient viewers may find the first half a little plodding, but that patience is well rewarded in a nail-biting latter half that features some unforgettable action sequences. The centerpiece finds Evelyn having to deliver her baby while dealing with two bugglies poking around the house by herself, after inadvertently drawing their attention following an incident with a nail on a stair tread. That is followed without pause by an encounter between Regan and one of the monsters in a cornfield, another with Regan and Marcus in a grain silo, and yet another with Evelyn and her baby in a flooding basement. Oh yes, when the aliens do catch up with the Abbotts, the tension, dread and sheer adrenaline rush is relentless, culminating in a payoff that literally and figuratively ends with a bang.

Neither of Krasinski’s previous directorial features have hinted that he would be a master of suspense, but the way he builds anticipation in cramped quarters is nothing short of masterful. But perhaps more importantly, this is one of those horror films where what happens to the characters matters to us, so as manipulative as they are, the character arcs which have been orchestrated for maximum catharsis hardly diminishes how poignantly we feel for what happens to them. In particular, Blunt’s keen portrayal of her character’s quiet resilience as well as Simonds’ exceptionally sensitive performance of her character’s grief, guilt and rebellion ground the emotional stakes compellingly, binding us powerfully to them as they go through the wringer.

Certainly, there’ll be cynics who cannot wait to point out the loopholes in logic and rationality, but ‘A Quiet Place’ should be enjoyed at face value for what it is – that is, a unique high-concept alien invasion horror that offers both visceral and emotional thrills. Never mind the classic conventions of jump-scares, out-of-focus background shots and hideous looking creatures, Krasinski employs the familiar in riveting ways, and none more so than that of building terror through silence. But it is by twinning it tightly with credible human drama that he truly elevates his movie beyond the gimmicky, and we dare say this will likely go down as one of the best horror films you’ll see this year.

Movie Rating:

(As viscerally thrilling as it is emotionally gripping, 'A Quiet Place' is high-concept alien invasion science-fiction executed with absolute brilliance)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Director: Anders Walter
Cast: Madison Wolfe, Zoe Saldana, Imogen Poots, Sydney Wade
RunTime: 1 hr 41 mins
Rating: PG (Some Violence)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website:

Opening Day: 10 May 2018

Synopsis: Directed by Academy Award-winning director Anders Walter, I Kill Giants tells the story of Barbara Thorson (Madison Wolfe), a teenage girl who chooses to escape the realities of school and a drab family life by retreating into her magical world of Titans and Giants. With the help of her new friend Sophia (Sydney Wade) and her school therapist (Zoe Saldana), Barbara will learn to battle her Giants and face her fears - tackling the mean bullies at school, her sister (Imogen Poots) and her difficult home life and eventually her biggest dread of the unknown.

Movie Review:

“I find Giants. I hunt Giants. I. Kill. Giants.”

And there summises the objective of our little heroine, Barbara Thorson (Madison Wolfe). The girl is a little of an outcast at school, visually represented by a headband with bunny ears (to better connect with her spirit animal) and behaviorally with her sharp retorts and solo missions (because most people are dumb). Embodied in a pre-teen girl with a face in a permanent scowl, I Kill Giant’s biggest anchor becomes its biggest flaw.

She’s just so damn unlikeable.

I get it. Like A Monster Calls, we are left with a story of a child battling monsters, both potentially imaginary, and in their actual lives itself. This is not a fresh take, and maybe it worked well in its original comic-turned-graphic novel, but coming so late into the game, I Kill Giants feels tiresome and preachy, with no real spin or life philosophy that we haven’t already heard.

Danish director Anders Walter, puts in all the right gears. There’s the more sombre palette. Check. Bring in some talented actors - Imogen Poots is Karen, the distant but trying older sister; Mrs Molle (Zoe Saldana) is the earnest school psychologist; and Sydney Wade plays Sophia, the new neighbour and schoolmate from Leeds. Triple-check. Inject a overall “are the giants real?” overtone to the whole script. Done.

But Joe Kelly, the original writer for the comic, fails to realise the magic from comic to screen. It's quite clear that she doesn’t understand the psyche of the movie-goer, as she litters the film with references but never explains any of them.

Probably meant as tropes to keep the mystery and reality questionable, this critical flaw not only leaves the audience lost, but even worse, unsatisfied.

There’s plenty of scenes to augment the wonder in Barbara’s life quest. She scrapes off powder from a mushroom into a jar. She pops a gummy bear into the same potion. She checks ropes and hides sigils with gold glitter in train cars. But we never ever really understand nor see these items really doing anything. Everything is implied, and so there’s never any real payoff.

It doesn’t help that the Chloe-Moretz-and-Dakota-Fanning-mix Wolfe comes across more brat than heroine. She slaps away everyone’s attention with a one-liner. She preempts the psychologist with better methods to help herself with a self-diagnosis and prescription. Half the time, Barbara utters some grandiose or snarky comment and runs away to do her mission, which we never really see to full effect. It’s really frustrating and makes for a labyrinth full of ill-timed discoveries. We already know the nature of the girl’s motives at the start of the film, so what value is dropping that sanctimonious revelation more than halfway into the film?

We get that Walter may be building up to the grand reveal, but it was a cliche that brought no emotional tug from the discovery.

“There are times when you have to ask yourself: do I want to live my life as a coward, or a warrior?” Barbara proclaimed at her friend at the school, challenging and mighty.

Her friend Sophia ran away.

Movie Rating:

(Too many dead-ends and not enough wonder. This magical adventure got busted by amateur writing and inadequate skills)

Review by Morgan Awyong

Genre: Comedy/Fantasy
Director: Scott Speer
Cast: Ross Lynch, Olivia Holt, Courtney Eaton, Harvey Guillen, Gregg Sulkin, Brec Bassinger, Maude Green, Markian Tarasiuk, Andrew Herr
Runtime: 1 hr 46 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Sexual References)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website:

Opening Day: 12 April 2018

Synopsis: Moving is never easy. But it’s especially hard when you’re moving across the country and it’s your senior year of high school. Kyle Moore (Ross Lynch) is a skateboarding surfer from Huntington Beach, California who suddenly has his life uprooted three thousand miles away to Connecticut when his parents split up. At his new east coast school, Kyle’s first day is one humiliating incident after the next, resulting in his cell phone being smashed to pieces by bullies. But everything changes when he goes to the mall to get the broken phone fixed. Kyle meets a wacky phone salesman named “The Bearded Dude” (played by Instagram sensation, ‘The Fat Jewish’), who hands him a new phone with a mysterious social media app called, YOUniverse, which will allow Kyle to be whoever or do whatever he wants. And that’s exactly what he does. Kyle answers the social media app’s questions and in doing so opens up a world of magic…

Movie Review:

Every teenager wishes that they were popular in high school, so what if there were an app which could fulfil their every egocentric wish? That’s the premise of ‘Status Update’, a ‘careful what you wish for’ teen fantasy with a social media twist.

Here, the 17-year-old Kyle (Disney Channel vet Ross Lynch) finds himself a misfit in the new Connecticut school he’s moved to, but manages to turn his fortunes around with a mysterious app named U-niverse. All Kyle needs to do is to enter who he wants to be and/ or what he wishes of others as a social media update and voila!

From acquiring the voice of a classically trained opera singer, to dancing like Bruno Mars in the canteen, to a ferris wheel ride in the middle of a meadow, Kyle employs the app to win the heart of the songbird of his dreams Dani (Olivia Holt). To be fair to Kyle, it isn’t all about him – not only does he gift his chubby best friend Lonnie (Harvey Guillen) with some impressive skateboarding moves in order to impress the rest of the school, he also uses his newfound powers to punish the Alpha hockey jock cum resident school bully Derek (Gregg Sulkin) and stand up to the self-absorbed male choir lead Brian (Markian Tarasiuk).

But as such stories go, this one scripted by ’17 Again’ writer Jason Filardi follows the familiar trajectory of cautionary tales. Instead of simply teaching Derek a lesson, Kyle gets carried away with the fame he finds as the school’s new hockey captain, and besides neglecting Lonnie for his teammates, Kyle starts to fall for Derek’s queen-bee girlfriend Charlotte (Courtney Eaton). Indeed, when reality bites (as it does), Kyle will be forced to decide just what kind of person he wants to be as well as what kind of life he wants to lead.

Whereas the first hour is the stuff of disposable teen fantasy, what follows actually turns out more poignant than you’re probably expecting it to be. With some words of wisdom from his mother (Wendi McLendon-Covey), Kyle starts to realise how social media is but “everybody’s highlight reel of what they wants you to see: bulls—t with a filter on it to make it look pretty” – and among other things, sees how his egotistical actions in the past have blinded him to the truth about his parents’ separation, made him a lousy friend to Lonnie, and jeopardised a beautiful duet in song and companionship that he had started with Dani.

It’s no surprise Kyle will get his act together, but it’s also easy to be won over by that predictable but nonetheless sweet ending. There is enough boyish charm in Lynch for you to root for him, and the chemistry between him and Holt is winning. The supporting cast also do their part to enliven their respective scenes, including Eaton as the school’s mean girl-in-chief, Famke Janssen as her sexually repressed mom, and John Michael Higgins (from the ‘Pitch Perfect’ series) as the deadpan school choir master.

On his part, Speer keeps the movie humming along at a reasonably engaging clip. That said, it is certainly disappointing that he hasn’t tried for a sharper treatment of the material, especially in bringing across its message about social media and its fakery. Notwithstanding, as a typical coming-of-age high-school romance comedy, ‘Status Update’ is still worth sharing, As long as you’re not looking for the next ‘Mean Girls’ or ‘Clueless’, you’ll enjoy this unassuming fantasy for what it’s worth.

Movie Rating:

(It's no classic, but this high-school wish fulfilment fantasy with a social media twist is still sweet, charming and occasionally poignant enough to win you over)

Review by Gabriel Chong

BOOK REVIEW #25: THE ART OF ALVIN JOHN

Posted on 24 Sep 2018

Movie posters were once a form of art and also a marketing tool. Painstakingly hand drawn on acrylic or oil canvas and then transfer to paper format, movie posters in the past were a joy to marvel at. Fast forward to present times and what you see nowadays in theaters are just awkwardly digitally created posters with embarrassing body proportions and cut-and-paste headshots. The Art of Alvi ...

Genre: Drama
Director: Greg Berlanti
Cast: Nick Robinson, Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp, Jorge Lendeborg, Miles Heizer, Keiynan Lonsdale, Logan Miller, Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel, Tony Hale
Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins
Rating: R21 (Homosexual Theme)
Released By: 20th Century Fox
Official Website:

Opening Day: 3 May 2018

Synopsis: Everyone deserves a great love story. But for seventeen-year old Simon Spier it's a little more complicated: he's yet to tell his family or friends he's gay and he doesn't actually know the identity of the anonymous classmate he's fallen for online. Resolving both issues proves hilarious, terrifying and life-changing. Directed by Greg Berlanti (Dawson's Creek, Brothers & Sisters), written by Isaac Aptaker & Elizabeth Berger (This is Us), and based on Becky Albertalli's acclaimed novel, LOVE, SIMON is a funny and heartfelt coming-of-age story about the thrilling ride of finding yourself and falling in love.

Movie Review:

It is unfortunate that a beautiful film like Love Simon, targeted for youth, is given a harsh and unforgiving rating by the censorship board in Singapore due to its central theme of homosexuality. Then again, what’s new?

Love Simon is a rather refreshing entry to gay films. Often, I can’t help but notice gay films in general consist of nudity, sex and sometimes, drugs. The media frequently portrays homosexuality as promiscuous and to a certain extent, especially in conservative societies, even dangerous. However, Love Simon shifts to focus on love instead. We don’t see any teenage sex, we don’t see drugs, we don’t see any nudity, only a brief on-screen kiss between two characters of the same sex – a kiss that simply means love, like in any other romantic comedies we indulge in.

Essentially, Love Simon shows you the struggle of a boy as he comes to terms with his own sexuality, peppered with light-hearted comical moments between the many teen characters. The film makes you reminisce the good old days in school, when we were wild, crazy and nonsensical. We see a kind of innocence in the teens as the film plays out – a kind of innocence that you only see in students, when apart from school, their lives revolve around simply having fun, new adventures and puppy love.

Simon, the titular character, is a high school student who forms an anonymous online romance with a classmate, but neither he nor his pen pal are openly gay. It is a tale of an assuming hero who overcomes the challenges of coming out. The struggles that he encounters feel so real, so grounded. Please pardon me for some spoilers ahead, but one of my favourite moments was when Simon came out to Leah, his best friend. Leah asks Simon why isn’t she, but Abby (whom Simon knows not long ago), the first person he came out to. Simon’s response? In one line he answers very simply, “I have known Abby only for six months, but I have known you for thirteen years.” This is a very powerful line, and captures – very fittingly – the challenges a closeted gay person might feel.

There’s much about this movie. Prima facie, it may be seen as a movie about LGBT, but probing deeper, this deceptively straightforward and simple film is also about how fear and shame can have the potential to rot the soul, where we – the audience – almost literally experience the shame that Simon experiences when his sexuality was publicly exposed. The filmmakers have crafted the first two acts well enough for us to be emotionally invested with Simon, and when Simon was teased in the school’s canteen for being gay, we could feel his sense of embarrassment but anger at the same time. For me, I admire films that have completely relatable characters because it really takes an experienced director to do so, and this movie is surely one that was treated with depth and subtlety. (That being said, I can’t help but notice some of the movie’s plot points of love and deceit are pretty similar to what I have read from some of Shakespeare’s works. There’s a bit of Twelfth Night and A Midsummer’s Night Dream. It’ll be rather cool if this movie can be read as a LGBT spinoff for those classic plays.)

The success of the film owes a lot to Nick Robinson’s delicate portrayal of Simon, as we see Simon grow from being a mere high school boy to a real man, a good elder brother and son, and a dear friend to treasure. His character is multi-faceted – which also means, you don’t have to be gay to appreciate the film (in case you are wondering). The emotions he feel are just so human, and your heart goes all out to him at the end of the film when he finally finds his true love – Blue.

Love Simon is truly a breath of fresh air and I wish there could be more of these movies can be made. It has definitely been a memorable and meaningful experience watching this movie.

Movie Rating:

(Inherently a crowd-pleaser and feel-good movie made sincerely, that carries a powerful and warm message of love and acceptance)

Review by Jason Lee

TRAILER WATCH - THE MEG

Posted on 11 Apr 2018

Jason Statham versus a giant shark. That in essence is the premise of THE MEG, a sci-fi thriller about a prehistoric 75-foot-long predator, the Megalodon, who threatens the lives of a research team trapped underwater — and, yes, the fate of the ocean itself. In the story, a deep-sea submersible that’s part of an international undersea observation program has been attacked by ...

Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Ruby Rose, Rainn Wilson, Cliff Curtis, Robert Taylor, Jessica McNamee, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Masi Oka, Winston Chao
RunTime: 1 hr 53 mins
Rating: PG13 (Intense Sequences)
Released By: Warner Bros
Official Website:

Opening Day: 9 August 2018

Synopsis: A deep-sea submersible is attacked by a massive creature, previously thought to be extinct, and now lies disabled at the bottom of the deepest trench in the Pacific with its crew trapped inside. With time running out, expert deep-sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor is recruited by a visionary Chinese oceanographer to save the crew from this prehistoric threat.

Movie Review:

‘The Meg’ is basically short for ‘Jason Statham versus a 75-foot prehistoric shark’, and if that doesn’t sound like your idea of an exciting late-summer movie, then this slab of B-movie cheese is clearly not for you. Oh yes, the science-fiction horror novel by Steve Alten on which this movie is based was precisely meant to be that sort of pulpy entertainment, and director Jon Turteltaub ensures that his adaptation is balanced squarely between self-awareness and self-seriousness, even though it does start off being more of the latter before tipping into more of the former.

So it goes that our introduction to Statham’s deep-sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor is no laughing business: in the throes of his latest mission to save the crew of a nuclear submarine trapped at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, Jonas is forced to sacrifice two of his own men inside the submarine after it is purportedly attacked by a giant creature which crushes its hull. Jonas’ account of the tragic event is disputed by another key member of his very own crew Dr Heller (Robert Taylor), and after being accused of suffering a psychological meltdown, he retreats to seclusion on a rustic island in Thailand.

Five years later, Jonas is given the opportunity to get even with the creature when he is approached by an old friend Mac (Cliff Curtis) to lead an urgent operation to save his ex-wife Lori (Jessica McNamee) and her two other crew mates stranded underwater in a deep sea submersible names Origin off the Chinese coast. Mac and Lori are part of a larger team on a modern research facility called Mana One exploring if there is life beneath the depths of the ocean as we know it, and the first successful so-called ‘insertion’ (cue the geek joke delivered by Masi Oka and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) into the hydrothermal sphere at the bottom of the seabed brings the Origin face to face with the titular super shark previously thought to be extinct.

At first, Jonas’ history means he is greeted with scepticism by the team on board Mana One, including chief oceanographer Dr Zhang Minway (Winston Chao), his equally accomplished daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing) and no less than Jonas’ former colleague Dr Heller himself. It goes without saying that Jonas will quickly prove that he wasn’t crazy after all, but after having also rescued Suyin who had valiantly but foolhardily gone to try to rescue Lori on her own, the two divorcees will begin to sketch the contours of a romance through some rare character moments, many of which also wisely draw on the precocious charms of Suyin’s eight-year-old daughter Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai).

It should come as no surprise that ‘The Meg’ is built on a number of elaborate action-driven set-pieces mostly executed by Mr Statham, but it is also worthwhile acknowledging that Turteltaub and his screenwriters (comprising of genre specialists Dean Georgaris and Jon and Erich Hoeber) do give the characters just enough texture to craft some memorable scenes within these set-pieces. Among the notable archetypes on display here are the self-absorbed financer Morris (Rainn Wilson), the tough-as-nails independent female type Jaxx (Ruby Rose), as well as the timid plus-sized African-American comic relief DJ (Page Kennedy); and without saying who lives, who dies or how either way, these characters in their respective ways inject verve into some of the gloriously over-the-top sequences.

These sequences of course dictate the course of the narrative, which sees the megalodon emerge from its hidden depths by some Deus Ex Machina to travel hundreds of miles over open ocean to terrorise hundreds of summer-loving beachgoers at Sanya Bay. Each one of the three distinct settings forms the backdrop of a significant encounter with the megalodon, with the latter two especially allowing Statham to flex his physicality without being in any claustrophobic confine. More than simple logic, that explains why Statham has to swim within 100 metres of the shark in order to fire a GPS tracker at its dorsal fin, or dive below the surface to rescue Suyin trapped within a shark cage, or in the film’s pièce de résistance escape from a damaged submersible just in time to spear the shark in its eye.

Indeed, there’s not a lot of common sense involved, though nothing so exaggerated as to qualify irrevocably as parody. The operative word here is fun, and on that account, ‘The Meg’ definitely scores. Statham carries each one of these outlandish scenes with a knowing wink, and his ability to deliver the intentionally corny one-liners is matchless. On his part, Turteltaub gleefully seizes every opportunity to emphasise the relative size of the competition between Statham and the Meg, and patiently waits till the climax to unleash all restraint and let the campiness overflow – there in Sanya Bay, you have young males ogling at the opposite sex on separate floating platforms before being forcibly rammed together by the marauding shark, a man in an inflatable bubble float trying to roll over his fellow swimmers before his bubble is literally burst by the shark, and a plump and pampered young boy holding a paddle pop getting his just desserts after defying his mother’s caution not to go into the ocean.

It probably won’t escape you that the movie is one of the high-profile US-China co-productions this year, and while that is reflected in the locations and choice of co-stars, the pleasures here still seem more culturally attuned to Hollywood sensitivities. To its credit, ‘The Meg’ never comes off being sillier than it intentionally puts itself out to be, and boasts more than its fair share of entertaining man-versus-enormous-shark sequences. But hey, we thoroughly enjoyed it for what it was worth, and considering that the movie has been stuck in development for over a decade, we’d add that we couldn’t have seen it any other way than ‘Jason Statham versus a 75-foot prehistoric shark’.

Movie Rating:

(Jason Statham versus a 75-foot prehistoric shark - it's as simple, as cheesy, but as enjoyable as that)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Drama
Director: Chapman To
Cast: Stephy Tang, Chapman To, Yasuaki Kurata, Stephen Au, Dada Chan
Runtime: 1 hr 30 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes)

Screening Dates: 4 & 5 May 2018 (visit scff.sg/films/the-empty-hands/ for showtimes)

Synopsis: Half-Chinese and half-Japanese Mari Hirakawa is the daughter of a Karate coach. Since her childhood, she was forced under her father’s training, and has resented Karate for as long as she can remember–her only wish is to sell the dojo after her father passes away. Following his death, Mari starts fantasizing about her life of freedom; however, she finds out from her lawyer that her father has only left her 49% ownership of the property, the other 51% was left to one of his worst pupils, Chan Keung. The two clash, and Chan has a proposition–if Mari is able to win a match in a legitimate martial arts competition, he will unconditionally give her his share of the property. Mari is trapped in a dilemma, and will have to make a choice that will change her life. Prolific comedienne actor Chapman To makes a stunning transition to film directing and is recognized by film critics as well as the Hong Kong Film Awards for his craft behind the camera and guiding the breakthrough performance of his leading actress Stephy Tang.

Movie Review:

Once one of Hong Kong’s most promising comedians, Chapman To had in recent years been shunned by many of its producers and directors – including his frequent collaborator Wong Jing – for his controversial comments on the mainland government in the wake of the Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan and the Umbrella Movement in his homeland. In fact, To’s last cinematic effort was the Singapore-Malaysia Chinese New Year co-production ‘Let’s Eat!’ two years ago, which also saw the star make his first foray into directing. That his sophomore feature film has taken this long is as a result of two factors – one, his own physical transformation, earning a black belt in karate along the way; and two, the time he has taken to nurture his pet project, which he produced and co-wrote with Erica Li.

To also co-stars in the drama as a former triad member Chan Kent who has just been released from prison, although he seems perfectly happy to let his character play second fiddle to Stephy Tang’s Mari Harikawa. ‘The Empty Hands’ is really a coming-of-age story of the half-Chinese, half-Japanese daughter of a karate master, who up till her father’s (Yasuaki Kurata) death, had resented him for forcing her into learning karate at a young age. In truth, she had only started to hate the sport after losing a competition when she was a teenager. That defeat had crushed her in more ways than one, and she now gets by in dead-end jobs while throwing herself into an affair with a married radio DJ Calvin (former news anchor Ryan Lau). Assuming that she would inherit the flat he had converted partially into a dojo, Mari wants only to sub-divide it into seven smaller rooms and get by with the rent she can therefore collect.

Unfortunately, Mari discovers that her father had only bequeathed 49 per cent of the property to her, with the rest going to Chan, who had been her father’s former pupil. With help from her father’s faithful assistant Mute Dog (Stephen Au), Chan reopens the dojo and starts giving lessons to a couple of young boys. Her frustration at being denied the chance to break free of her father’s shackles, coupled with her boyfriend’s neglect, leads Mari to fly into a rage one day, though she is quickly put into her place by the students as well as Chan. The latter lays down a challenge: if she can enter a fighting competition and remain standing at the end of it, he will transfer his share of the flat to her, so that she can do with it as she pleases. Cue the obligatory training montages and the eventual underdog triumph, which to her credit, Tang executes with utter conviction and credibility.

Oh yes, Tang is truly mesmerising here – not only does she make her character with all its flaws relatable and sympathetic, she handles Mari’s subsequent transformation with nuance, grace and restraint. Tang has said that she had put in six months of karate training into the role, and it shows in how the flexibility and fluidity of her moves onscreen. For someone whose claim to fame was countless Patrick Kong romances with her ex-beau Alex Fong, Tang makes a convincing leap into serious dramatic territory here, reinventing herself without doubt as a serious actress. Like we said earlier, To is all too willing to let Tang be in the limelight, and his trust in Tang to take the film to greater heights is certainly not misplaced.

On his part, To focuses on sculpting a meditative film about redemption and reconciliation, emphasising the importance of personal discipline through the intersection of karate and life itself. His love and reverence for the sport is evident throughout the film, which boasts more than a few memorable impressionistic shots of Tang, To and Kurata in practice. Where To falters is in the narrative itself, which while clearly intended as a character study on Mari, leaves a lot of subplots hanging – for one, besides a montage detailing Chan’s backstory, there is little else about Chan that comes into focus; for another, Mari’s relationship woes are left hanging; and for yet another, other supporting characters like Dada Chan’s busty masseur and Au’s Mute Dog are hardly given much by way of a character arc.

But that hardly means that ‘The Empty Hands’ comes up empty; on the contrary, it is absorbing in its own offbeat way, peppered with some welcome moments of levity by To himself. It is undeniably commendable that To has eschewed commercial sensibility in favour of a more intimate, artistic and even eccentric sports drama, and we’re certainly piqued by what he does next in his filmmaking career. Likewise for Tang, whose breakout performance here is the heart and soul of the movie. Don’t go in expecting the sort of payoff like Nick Cheung’s ‘Unbeatable’; instead, think of how you would clear your mind, calm your thoughts and deliberate your every motion as you would in karate, and that’s about how you’d enjoy this deliberately paced but wholly engrossing film.

Movie Rating:

(Bolstered by a stunning career-best performance by Stephy Tang, Chapman To's meditative coming-of-age drama is a moving story of redemption and reconcilation)

Review by Gabriel Chong