"I find myself hoping that one day, he'll (Anthony Wong) have a heart condition that forces him to remove himself from the entertainment industry for a while."
- Owlman
Ah Sou (2005)
AKA: Mob Sister
Director: Wong Ching-Po
Writer: Szeto Kam-Yuen
Producer: Lawrence Cheng Tan-Shui
Cast: Annie Liu (Lau Sum-Yau), Karena Lam Ka-Yan, Eric Tsang Chi-Wai, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Simon Yam Tat-Wah, Alex Fong Chung-Sun, Liu Ye, Yuen Wah, Liu Kai-Chi, Lawrence Cheng Tan-Shui
Running Time: 90 min.
Plot: See review below.
Reviews
OWLMAN'S REVIEW: After watching Jay Chou mangle the Cantonese dialect in Initial D, I put in Ah Sou and watched Anne Liu do the same.
And that, unfortunately, was all I got out of this movie.
But in the interest of fleshing out this review more, I will tell you why I think Anthony Wong needs to take a break. Out of the couple of hundred movies from Hong Kong that I've watched over my lifetime, I think Wong's been in about 95% of them. I don't know whether he's got some kind of drug or gambling habit that he has to nurture, resulting in him taking on project after project after project. What I do know is that there is the law of diminishing returns to consider here. As he takes on more stuff, he's really lowering the quality of his work. While we can praise him for work done in Hard Boiled or The Mission, we can't overlook his digressions in The Twins Effect or Cat & Mouse.
His performance in Ah Sou as the fancy-pants Whacko isn't going to win any more fans. But then again, none of the other performances are worth looking into. All of the male characters phone in their attempts at cookie-cutter "cool" personas and Karena Lam tries her hardest to be a nutbuster but fails miserably.
But back to Wong. I find myself hoping that one day, he'll have a heart condition that forces him to remove himself from the entertainment industry for a while. I'm beginning to see him more often that I see my parents and it's become just as painful.
OWLMAN'S RATING: 2/10
