艋舺 / MONGA

So this is the hottest flick in Taiwan right now… MONGA. I’d been hearing about it from my relatives and from watching TV, and then a friend who knows the director wanted to go see it… so we watched it last night! And it was quite good. I have to honestly say I wasn’t really expecting too much based on Taiwanese films I’d seen before (which actually isn’t very much), but this one was was very well made, has a great story, and the actors are pretty hot. Puahaha. Takeshi Kaneshiro, watch out!

Random tidbits: The whole entire time, I kept thinking that one of the main characters, “Monk” (Ethan Ruan) looked so much like Kev Nish from FM! And then “Mosquito” (Mark Chao) kinda looked like Bruce Lee… haha.

I don’t know too much about the back story of this film and right now there’s no IMDB page for it either… hmm. Well, in short, it’s about a place called Monga, which according to my uncle, baaack in the day was a port where many mainlanders entered Taiwan from. Ok, if you don’t like spoilers, well here’s your SPOILER ALERT … In this film, the story takes place in the ’70s and ’80s and is about a group of friends, part of the Temple Front gang. The narrator of the story, Mosquito, is invited to be a part of the gang after a silly fight with members of another gang, the Back Alley. Mosquito has grown up without a father and has never had any real friends, so after Monk and the others take him under their wing, he fully embraces the new lifestyle and there’s no turning back. The story has a number of heart-wrenching twists and while it is a drama, there’s also a lot of humor which I loved. In the end, it all comes down to the characters trying to balance the harsh realities of a violent gangster life with the honor of friendship and brotherhood.

I have no idea when the film will be hitting the U.S., but I hope it will! Here’s the website, but it’s all in Chinese: mongathemovie.com