Netflix A-Z: Z Storm (2014)

After some thought, I decided that the best way to end the first round of Netflix A-Z is with some Hong Kong crime thrillers.  Hong Kong movies are the key to what made me fall in love with movies in the first place.  While a ton of you were watching all those popular classics, a good part of my youth was watching Chinese films.  This one holds a pretty outstanding cast (although I didn’t know anything about it before I started it up).  There’s been so many thrillers in Hong Kong movies lately and a few of them in the past few years have “storm” in their title that I’m honestly a little confused. Still, lets check out this one!

Z Storm (2014)

Director: David Lam

Cast: Louis Koo, Ka Tung Lam, Dada Chan, Michael Wong, Janelle Sing, Hoi-Pang Lo, Stephen Au, Siu-Fai Cheung, Ying Kwan Lok, Kai Chi Liu, Alfred Cheung

Hong Kong Police force govern the law.  Their gatekeepers are an outsider group that oversees and stops any corruption called ICAC.  When the CCB (Commerical Crime Bureau) go on an investigation in a leading accounting firm, they come up empty-handed even though it came from a reliable source.  Their team leader is Officer Wong Man Bin (Ka Tung Lam).  Catching wind of this from the former source, the ICAC lead by William (Louis Koo) launch an investigation despite their unwelcome presence with the CCB.  Their investigation proves to be hard to follow as their leads start coming to dead ends continuously.  When an unknown turn of events happen, they learn that there is a deeper story here.  Wong and a famous lawyer Malcolm Wu (Michael Wong) are part of a bigger circle run by a mysterious Z and their Z hedge fund, who is going to take millions and millions of the civilians money for investments when it launches in six days may actually be a financial fraud.  However, the Hong Kong officials have set a time limit. In the six days, they must find concrete evidence to support their theory in order to stop Z hedge funds launch, if not, there is nothing they can do anymore.  Its a race against time? Can they do it?

 I love Hong Kong films and honestly, I’m pretty forgiving for it.  The reason being that Hong Kong sometimes will have their surprises that they whip out once in a while that turn out to be total gems.  They always have that potential but the industry always forgets that they can do that and fall into their normal tropes.  It makes the story predictable and for a thriller, offers less thrills and more plot holes.  Z Storm definitely is a generic thriller.  I guessed the dialogue before it was said and mostly figured out how it was going to end.  Story-wise, Z Storm could be much better.  Z stands for Zoro (no, that isn’t a spelling mistake) but its what Z stands for in the Z hedge fund whose mystery man is also nicknamed Zoro.  Cheesy enough for you? I’m just going to come out and say it right away what I thought made this movie even worse than having a flawed plot hole that tried to put in some typical girl drama (which I thought wasn’t particularly necessary) but the fact that they ended it deliberately trying to milk a sequel.  I never particularly like movies like that and on top of that, they ended with some really creepy normal day lives shots.

BUT, despite all its storytelling flaws, Z Storm’s strength is in its cast.  Many of you might not know unless you are familiar with the TVB (Hong Kong TV Broadcasting Channel) drama series but in 1997, Louis Koo did a series called I Can’t Accept Corruption (Get it? ICAC?).  You got it.  That year, he came back strong (physically) and tanned his skin, buffed up and changed him image from the weak pale Hong Kong boy that he was before and got cast into this series.  He played an agent working for ICAC and I loved that show for many reasons.  One of them, being him and his acting.  Watching Z Storm was like he was taking that role again but with a more mature take on it. Nostalgia might be a culprit here.  And the fact that if I had a Hong Kong citizenship, my dream has always been to be in ICAC. It surprises a lot of people when I say it but hey, its a dream.  It can be as huge (and stupid) as I’d like it to be 😉

He’s not the only one that deserves applause.  Michael Wong is fantastic as Malcolm Wu.  He’s always been a good guy.  The top boss in the Hong Kong Police and always the all around good guy but this time, he turns it around and becomes a greedy and deceiving hot shot lawyer and he even swears on screen and says “b*tch”.  Its always great to see actors embrace other roles and switch it up.  But sometimes, you find their roles and excel at them.  That person is our CCB dirty cop Wong played by Ka Tung Lam.  I believe it was in Gen-X Cop back in 1999 that Ka Tung Lam took on his first bad guy role and man, did I want to punch him in the face while being completely dazzled that he could do that after playing lame, weak romance drama series characters.  From then on, he went from small roles to Infernal Affairs and then look at him now, one of the strongest bad guy roles I’ve seen him in.  One that made me love how bad he was but want to really hurt his character for all the horrible things he did. Its not only that. Z Storm carries a strong supporting cast with some actors that have been out of the business for a long time.  Alfred Cheung is the man I have in mind. While you have some more popular secondary character roles like Hoi Pang Lo, Stephan Au, Siu-Fai Cheung and Kai Chi Liu.  They are typical in many Hong Kong thrillers and action (even comedy).

Overall, Z Storm lacks in a concrete story line.  It does have its thrills but not enough to make you be blown away with its plot.  However, what it does lose in plot, it makes up for with an outstanding cast that breathes the needed energy and dynamic needed for each of their roles.  That includes a perfectly cast leads from Louis Koo, Ka Tung Lam and Malcolm Wu all the way down to their supporting and secondary characters.  Nostalgia definitely played a part in my love for this premise and while I dislike them using this film to build up a sequel, I do appreciate the motivation of the story itself even if it was executed poorly.

First round of Netflix A-Z is successfully completely!
If you do have any obscure movies, you’d like me to draft up in the second round, please suggest them!
Remember that I use Netflix Canada so I may not have the extensive selection you have in US. 
Thanks so much for the great response to this series! It’ll be returning in January 2016! 🙂

TIFF 2013: Rigor Mortis (2013)

After starting this write-up the night after I saw the movie, I decided to stop and really think about it a bit more and thats why its coming out even later than the more recent The Wind Rises that I saw. Rigor Mortis is definitely one that has sparked my thoughts quite a bit and even my best friend and I spent a good amount of time discussing it the days afterwards.

Rigor Mortis

Director: Juno Mak

Cast: Siu-ho Chin, Richard Ng, Kara Hui, Hoi-Pang Lo, Anthony Chan, Nina Paw

An ominous-looking public-housing tower is the final rest stop for a miserable former movie star (Chin) who’s mourning the loss of his wife and son. Filled with the old, the weary, and the forgotten remnants of society, this last chance hotel nonetheless contains many comforts of Hong Kong life — a noodle shop, a seamstress and a Taoist monk. Ghosts and spirits already haunt its hallways, but when a distraught widow tries to bring her husband back from the dead, the tenement is plunged into a dark storm of supernatural chaos. – Tiff.net

There really isn’t much I can say without ruining the movie plot anymore, so I just present it with the plot summary from TIFF website. Surprisingly, I was not sure whether there would be a good story behind it. I’m happy to say that the story behind Rigor Mortis and down to every detail actually pays tribute to a lot of Chinese lore or maybe a  more suitable word is superstition or beliefs about ghosts, spirits and more importantly, Chinese “hopping” vampires.  However, for the majority, maybe the appreciation won’t be as deep if you haven’t watched some of the Mr. Vampire movies that were made a while back.

What very much is amazing is that they retain a part of the old cast.  The main actor was part of every Mr. Vampire movie except for the very first, I believe.  He’s not very known or popular in Hong Kong right now but he carries the role: the drama, the sorrow and rises up to carry something stronger.  I was actually really impressed at him and the style he brought to the movie.  That also leads us to look at the other actors involved.  There were not a lot of characters but the few that were brought in has had a long and outstanding work in the Hong Kong movie industry. Kara Hui is magnificient as a troubled mother and fighting to care for her son and not get evacuated.  Richard Ng’s return to the industry has made me see him a different light with recent movies and this one definitely has to be the best so far.

Aside from a very well-chosen cast that interpreted the material really well, I have to say that the most surprising thing was Juno Mak’s directorial debut has made me seen the growth in him.  A few years back, Juno Mak was a singer who faded fairly quickly and had many rumors of not holding up his own but rather having a rich family to support his work.  As he came back this time with a movie that was part of TIFF, I was a bit skeptical but the trailer made it look extremely promising.  The best part was the way he directed the movie,  He gave it a very dark feeling and added on a good amount of gore.  Lets say for some scenes, I was happy that we chose to eat AFTER the movie.  The eerie feeling and the old traditional folksongs/chants (I’m still trying to figure out the word for it) that reflected the spirits and vampires to set the tone of the movie right from the start. A new take to hopefully revive a respected comedic series.  Visually, this was incredibly well done.  It have to applaud the efforts of the creepy effects, the ghosts, spirits and the vampire itself.  Although, Chinese vampires are something like zombies to me.

Another thing I am very impressed with is the detail.  Many Chinese people will catch onto it as the movie progresses starting from the cursed room number of 2442.  4 sounds like death in Cantonese and 2 sounds like easy.  Next we have talismans that detail the scenes for praying and Buddhism in temples, and the instrument that the vampire hunters use that is how everyday people believe that its to repel spirits, etc.  I’m actually quite surprised this movie made it through to an International festival especially when there is so much that the audience needs to know to fully experience the message sent.  Even when looking at the translation, it doesn’t really grasp the vulgarity of the language used.  Cantonese in itself is already quite a slang Chinese dialect in itself but in this, they implement a lot of vulgar slang to focus probably on the type of people that live there, sarcastic in their seemingly bland life despite all the the abnormality to others who are new to it.

After some long reflection, I think that I would recommend Rigor Mortis.  One, it packs a lot of scares (although I’m not particularly the right person to ask).  Its not jump scares but rather it builds up on the gore and disgust as it unwinds itself in a creepy way.  The tone is set really well to emphasize the atmosphere Juno Mak wants the audience to feel.  The cast is well-balanced, renowned and really help make the movie and the story engaging and mysterious. Sure, there are flaws, especially in the ending with some bad CGI but to me, it was meant to be that way to complement the ending. Telling you that would be going into spoiler territory and so far,  I’ve done pretty well at staying away. Even with that, most of the movie has some really impressive visuals that work well with everything.  If you can see some Mr. Vampire before, that would be good, but even if you didn’t, I think this one won’t disappoint. Give it a shot, there’s definitely something good about it.  A good directorial debut for Juno Mak in my book and I applaud all the hard work of researching for the depth and symbolism in this.  I respect that a lot!

Have you ever seen any movies with Chinese hopping vampires? Do you know much about Chinese beliefs/superstitions about spirits, ghosts and undead?