U-Man

Rating: 3/10
Year: 2001
Genre: Comedy
Director: Cheung Chi-Sing
Cast: Anthony Wong, Sam Lee, Gillian Chung, Rachel Fu

I actually want to recommend this film to everyone, since it shows us how crappy a movie can do. It contains all the elements that make a movie bad.

The plot of the story is not very complicated. It is about two undercover cops (Anthony Wong and Sam Lee) investigating a criminal case in a school. During the process of their investigation, they become friends with the students and teacher Shan (Rachel Fu) there, and this friendships gradually turn into love affairs, Anthony Wong falls in love with Shan while Sam Lee and one of the students (Gillian Chung) develop an awkward love relationship, as Sam, disguised as a female student, is loved by Gillian. At the same time, another female student is also having an affair with Gillian, making it a weird triangular lesbian love relationship.

At first glance, the plot seems interesting. However, every events in the film is loosely connected together. They do not have any chain reaction to propel the plot at all. For instance, the lesbian relationship among Sam, Gillian and the other student does not have anything to do with the major investigation plot. The love between Anthony Wong and Rachel Fu also lacks development. Everything is just like a mess and improvised.

The structure of the plot follows the successful formula from the 80s action comedy, which is totally outdated. At the end of the film, there is a gun fighting sequence. It is supposed to be the climax of the film. Unluckily, the director fails to produce any excitment at all. On the one hand, this sequence is not bloody, the action choreography is not intense; on the other hand, it is not humorous, it does not have any Lucky Star-alike witty move. Rather than serving as the climax of the film, the gun fighting sequence is actually a big letdown.

The dialogues of the film are almost all rubbish, especially the clumpsy lines of Anthony Wong. What he says in the film is mainly crap, less than 10% of his dialogues is necessary to drive the plot. Film is not reality, every word spoken by the actors should have meaning. If a film tries to imitate what people say in reality, it is destined to be a failure. The script writer of this film, Cheung Chi Sing, is not a first time writer, it is really hard to understand why he could have written such crappy dialogues and scenes.

It seems that the only attraction of this film is Gillian Chung (and perhaps Rachel Fu), especially that this film is Gillian's debut into the movie industry. It is a good news to Gillian's fans because she looks cute in the film. The performance of Rachel Fu, a commercial idol from Taiwan, is also much better than I expected.
Without Gillian Chung, I really couldn't find any reason to watch this film.

VCD (HK version) - There are no difference between the VCD and DVD versions at all. By that I do not mean their image and sound qualities are the same. What I mean is that for this kind of low quality work, any versions will fail to hold the attention of the audience.

Cool guy(s) - Gillian Chung

Reviewed by: Kantorates