Movie Review: Conspirators/同謀

Conspirators/同謀 is the third and final movie that began with 2007’s The Detective, starring Aaron Kwok as a Chinese detective from Thailand.

In Conspirators/同謀, Aaron tries to finally solve the 30 year old mystery of his parents’ murder.

His investigation takes him from Thailand to Malaysia and China.

He’s aided by Nick Cheung, who plays a Chinese detective from Malaysia.

I watched this on DVD recently. I had skipped it in cinemas because the second movie had annoyed me so much that I refused to take the risk.

Well, I can say that I made a mistake.

Conspirators/同謀 isn’t going to make cinematic history, but it’s a solidly entertaining movie.

If you watch many of these reviews, you know that I have one very basic rule about movies:

Does it entertain me?

I don’t want or need to be educated by a movie, I want to be entertained. If I want to be educated, I’ll read a book.

The movie entertained me. I enjoyed the characters, and the acting, and the story.

It was nice to see Chen Kuan Tai in a movie, and he does a good job with his role.

Aaron Kwok certainly overacts, but that’s just what Aaron Kwok does.

The thing I really liked about the first Detective movie was that Aaron didn’t overact. He either reined it in or was reined in.

I’m so used to his overacting that I can just about ignore it, but I do notice it.

Especially the last shot of the movie. He couldn’t be trying any harder for an award than he is in that scene.

Just stop it…

Nick Cheung stole the movie for me with his role.

He’s wearing a pretty weird wig, but his character, an asthmatic detective with martial arts prowess and an eye for earning money kept me laughing the whole time.

But among the laughs, you can see a lot of acting skill, and Nick Cheung really makes the role more than it should be.

Jiang Yiyan plays Chen Kuan Tai’s daughter.

No matter what happens to her, she never smiles. I don’t know why.

She just always looks like this.

Well, I mean during the movie. Otherwise, she seems to be happy.

See?

One minor miracle in the film is that Siufay’s acting didn’t annoy me.

He can actually act, but I guess he’s usually just asked to chew up scenery.

Luckily for me, that doesn’t happen here.

Oxide Pang’s direction is okay; there were things I liked about the film and things I didn’t.

There were title cards to tell you what country the scene was in, and I appreciated it. That may seem like a small thing, but I found it helpful.

Then again, it was easy to know when the story was in Malaysia because for some reason Oxide Pang decided to make Malaysia look really orange and dusty.

The climax of the film is totally predictable, but like the rest of the movie I found it entertaining enough that I didn’t really care.

And don’t get me wrong, I have no problem telling you that the plot is, according to my audio notes, “a cheeseburger that gets drowned in extra dingbat sauce.”

I don’t even know what that means, and I said it.

Actually, it means that the plot didn’t surprise me at all.

The Conspirators veers between dramatic and comic aspects, but for me it never stopped the movie from being entertaining, and that’s all I can ask.

Well, that and the fact that even though it had China money, it didn’t end up being obtrusively ‘China market’ friendly.