生日多戀事 (1997)

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生日多戀事 (1997)

Stand Behind the Yellow Line

Reviewed by: danton
Date: 01/03/2002

Utterly forgettable romance/drama starring Nicky Wu and Annie Wu (as well as Francis Ng as the bad guy). Nicky plays a Kung Fu master (there's a believable casting choice right there!) who gets dragged to a brothel by his friends celebrating his birthday. Of course, he runs into poor Annie, who's being coerced by some triads into prostitution. Nicky is her first customer. They sit around embarassed, and before long, the police come to raid the place. Of course they jump out the window, and a chase ensues, during which she twists her ankle, so Nicky has no choice but to carry her to his place to rest and heal. And wouldn't you know it - they fall in love. Everyone would be all peachy, except triad boss Francis Ng can't have his "girls" just wandering off and being happy, so he walks around shouting a lot and slapping numerous underlings. Cut to MTV-style song with images of the young lovers. Cut to Francis doing some more slapping. Eventually, Annie goes back to spare Nicky the trouble, but he won't have none of it. After all, he knows Kung Fu, so he goes and kicks some butt (nice opportunity to do another MTV-style song sequence here) and carries her back home (I missed something there - did she twist her ankle again????).

Then it's time for the final showdown: Francis and his underlings round up Nicky's grandmother and a bunch of other old folks. The granny (played by Helena Law) knows kung fu as well, and she proceeds to tell Francis what a bad boy he is. Francis does some more slapping, and then in one of those "only in HK movies" moments, orders his underlings to rape poor granny. Alas, they have trouble with that, because it's time to wrap up the movie, so Nicky and Annie rush over, now they do the slapping, Francis gets arrested, and we have a final MTV-style song sequence.

What a piece of garbage. The movie wants to be a more romantic "Young and Dangerous", except that they didn't have time or talent to develop a decent script. The movie has one decently choregraphed chase sequence, but other than that you have no script, leads who can't act, a movie title that makes no sense, and a total of 3 cheesy Cantopop songs. Stay away.