Movie Review: The Great Magician/大魔術師

2012 has not started well.

I didn’t want to look forward to  The Great Magician/大魔術師, even though it has a great cast and a director whose work I frequently admire.

When you look forward to something, you have expectations.

And expectations can be a bad thing.

Especially for viewing Hong Kong/China films.

Especially for the last few years. 

The Great Magician/大魔術師 is a story that takes place during the early part of the 20th century in China, when warlords… warred.

Sorry.

Tony Leung Chiu Wai plays a magician who shows up in a town and proceeds to wow the men and woo the women with his magic skills.

That hand sure makes women hot.

He takes over a struggling restaurant and turns it into a magic theater, much to the previous owner’s joy. The owner is played by Lam Suet, one of my favorite character actors and the man most deserving of the title Louis Guzman of Asia.

Lau Ching Wan plays a warlord with seven wives (hence the reason he always carries a gun).

拉皮條是不容易的的.

He takes a shine to the magician, but nowhere near the shine he takes to Zhou Xun’s character, who has (almost) no desire to become wife #8.

The only way she could look less interested and more disappointed would be if I sat next to her.

As you might surmise, there is of course more to things than meet the eye, and over the course of the film the plot unfolds.

There is intrigue:

“你覺得很幸運, 朋克???”

Deception:

Spoiler: Zhou Xun is actually a Vulcan.

Explosions:

 ”Who touched my motherf@#$ing Hibachi???”

Romance:

“你變得昏昏欲睡, 也濕潤.”

And entertainment:  

DJ小托尼的唱盤!

Unfortunately, as the plot unfolds it also unravels. The narrative makes less and less sense as each revelation, reversal, and realization smashes the film’s plot into smithereens.

The Great Magician/大魔術師 ’s initial premise eventually falls apart and the plot becomes so convoluted its impossible to follow, and is summarily abandoned, becoming a farce.

It also  turns into a buddy film. Truth be told, its a lot of fun to watch the two LCWs acting together again, and they’re both good enough that you get pretty well distracted from the fact that the story went screaming off the rails like the Wenzhou Express.

I was distracted by other things as well:

“搖尾乞憐和好色的外國人. 他們讓我噁心!”

It’s not a bad movie, I guess, its just that it becomes impossible (and unimportant) to try and follow the plot line that has been unfolding. It’s still entertaining, but it is truly mindless entertainment.

Derek Yee’s latest film is a GREAT film for Chinese New Year. Because all the greatest Chinese New Year movies are essentially farcical in nature.

Even if it wasn’t a CNY film, I know one way this film could have worked. If Tsui Hark had been behind the camera on this film rather than in front of it, it would have come off much better.

“This is no Peking Opera Blues , let me tell you!”

I just wish I had waited until the New Year holiday to watch it, or it had been a bit more overtly marketed as a New Year’s farce. I would have interpreted it differently and probably enjoyed it more.

Then again, at least it wasn’t marketed as The Great People’s Magician vs. The Evil Japanese Invaders, as this weird promotional image could easily suggest.