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旺角的天空2男燒衣 (1996)
Those Were the Days


Reviewed by: rarnom
Date: 04/19/2005
Summary: The Hong Kong version of 'GHOST'

Louis Koo plays a former Triad member who moves into an apartment next to a nice timid girl and her blind grandfather who also is a loud street performer. She is a quiet shy girl who enjoys discussing her life with a puppet. She works with her aunt at a street side shop making paper manequin heads and one of which happens to look exactly like Louis Koo. It intrigues her and naturally they fall in love, much to the disdain of his current Triad girlfriend who happens to be a sister to Roy Cheung who is an evil and active Triad member. The nice timid girl ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time (during a beat down involving Louis Koo) and she gets stabbed with a pipe in the stomach. She dies while Koo is taking her to the hospital. Koo is still very much in love and performs a ritual to bring her ghost to him. The spend some time together and then she has to leave because of some mystical law. After she is gone Louis Koo naturally goes out for her revenge in an awesome machette/sword battle that results in his death and he is free to join her as a ghost himself.

First off, this film apparently has NOTHING to do with the Simon Yam film 'Man Wanted'. I have no idea why it is labeled as 'Man Wanted 2' in some databases. Having said that I was going into this film expecting the same level of action and violence. This film is not by any means an action film. It is a romantic drama and is very much a copy of the American film 'GHOST'. It is funny because during the first half of the film I noticed in one of the Triad guy's apartments the movie poster for 'GHOST' on a wall. I didn't think much of it until I noticed the path the film was taking. As a romantic drama it gets the job done. There are a couple moments of incredibly out of place silly humor, complete with tacky goofy music. It is very unfunny but it doesn't last long. There are a few action scenes and the inevitable revenge battle at the end is a fun melee of wakazashi and machette.

Overall a decent film, not recommended unless you enjoy romantic dramas to some extent. There is not enough action in this film to satisfy action junkies. Definately do not watch this if you are expecting anything similar to 'Man Wanted'.

Version Reviewed:
Fitto Mobile VCD

video: standard VCD quality. nothing exceptionally good or bad about the video quality.

audio: standard Cantonese/Mandarin L/R channel setup. One interesting bit is that in the Cantonese track occasionally a word would get 'bleeped' out. I gathered it was when they were discussing a specific city or name.

subtitles: above average VCD subs. White subs, very readable, NOT digitally added, but very readable.