To Be Number One
Director: Poon Man-kit
Year: 1991
Rating: 5.0
This "To Be Number
One" (as there are a few with this similar title) could have been an interesting
movie with a slightly more restrained performance from Ray Lui. It is in
some way a HK Godfather as it tells the story of Mainlander, Ho, and his
comrades coming to HK to make it good in the Triads. The movie spans over
a number of years in his career showing his rise ans fall. Parts of it are
quite interesting, but it seems to go on for much too long.
Ray Lui seems to be trying to imitate both Brando and Chow Yun Fat at timesand
his scenery chewing performance just annoyed me to the point where I wanted
to fast forwarded to the action scenes and to the Amy Yip scenes.
Amy plays a triad moll who bounces (and does she bounce) between boyfriends
and though her role is not large - whenever she shows up sporting lots and
lots of cleavage my interest perked up. There is one very good action shoot
em up scene near the end. Though clearly this film did not resonate with me,
it was quite popular in HK and made a star of Ray Lui. In the comedic parody
of triad films - Days of Being Dumb - Lui is a role model for the two triad
wannabes - Jacky Cheung and Tony Leung.
