Movie Review: Punished/報應

I saw this film last week in Sha Tin, a rare occurrence of ‘proximal viewing,’ considering that I live nearby.

I had read the synopsis on the UA Cinemas website, almost against my better judgment. To illustrate, let me reproduce it here:

When a tycoon’s daughter is found dead after being rescued from abduction, he appoints his ex-bodyguard to avenge her death by not only hunting down and exterminating everyone responsible for the abduction but also videotaping the process of each “execution”. Instead of feeling liberated, the tycoon becomes more perturbed on watching the tapes, lest one day he shall get retribution himself for all the killings.

In the end, the ex-bodyguard manages to track down the mastermind behind the abduction, who turns out to be the female personal assistant of the tycoon’s daughter. The tycoon determines to carry out the final execution himself, only to discover she is the mother of a 2-year-old girl. Will he pull the trigger and make an orphan out of this innocent soul? That is the question.

Now, strictly speaking, this doesn’t give away Punished/報應‘s climax. But it gives away everything else.  So watching the film, I had no real surprises.

Anthony Wong plays the rich, distant father whose daughter gets into more trouble than she can handle. He realizes too late what he could/should/would have done differently.

Richie Jen plays the bodyguard whose conscience, or lack thereof, allows him to behave in ways that are useful professionally (torture, homicide, etc.) but not useful personally as a father and ex-husband.

Jun Kung has a small part, and is convincing in his role. It is odd to watch people you know portray characters so unlike their real selves, but he does a good job. I don’t want to talk about it too much, because if I did, it would reveal more of the plot than I care to.

Candy Lo Hau Yam is equally impressive, if not more so. But honestly, I only say that because I really, really like looking at Candy Lo.

In addition, since she is not really (as far as I know) a single mother, her ability to portray one so well was, for me, quite impressive.

Not as impressive as the tattoo below her navel, which we don’t see in this film, but that’s what DVDs are for, right?

Janice Man does an adequate job with her role as the young angry junkie, and if she’s not necessarily very realistic, its kind of a good thing, all in all.

I don’t think people unfamiliar with junkies are missing anything, I really don’t.

Punished/報應 is engaging, well-made, and entertaining, but I also found it to be rather slapdash in certain ways.

Now, maybe I’m just a Detail Nazi.

Jesus, now I sound like Lars Von Trier.

Verisimilitude certainly has degrees, and movie audiences are not generally expected to want much realism.

And I can certainly cop to being an overeducated @sshole.

But still, I don’t think asking for a little plausibility makes me a bad person.

Punished/報應 has a few too many coincidences of convenience and utter triumphs of technology. You’d have to see the film to know what I mean, but I just found myself thinking that these were cheap outs to simply keep the story moving.

It is one of my pet peeves about movies in general and often about local films in particular. Writers don’t know or care how to get themselves out of a situation, and they seem to get lazy.

This laziness can extend to the producers as well. I know the person who did the English and Chinese subtitles for this film and Milkyway’s previous effort, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.

She has yet to be paid for either and received no credit.

This kind of thing is all too common here. While some may decry Hollywood’s unionized, fascistic approach to labor and compensation thereof, it does at least insure that people get paid for doing their job. In a city with ‘rule of law’ that makes capitalism a de facto religion, the local film industry could do a whole lot better job of.

The same could be said of Punished/報應.  It’s not bad, but it could easily have been better. It would have just taken a little more effort, which apparently wasn’t worth doing.

Gee, thanks…