To Where He Belongs
Director: Ally Wong
Year: 2000
Rating: 2.0
I don’t have the
patience to spend a lot of time writing this review and you shouldn’t have
to waste your time reading about this film. So I will make it short and to
the point – watch this film only if someone has a loaded gun pointed at your
head. It’s that bad. Of the party of four people that I went to the Music
Palace with to watch this, I was the only sorry soul still sitting there
when the lights came on. Before he left, one of my fellow viewers kept bending
over and asking “is this movie making any sense to you?” - to which
I could only shake my head no. OK – maybe a few more details to fill up this
page – but you need not go further.
The movie has no sense of style, no sense
of humor – and there is simply no sense as to why this film was made. What
a tired, inept piece of work this is – and most sadly of all it wastes the
talents of people like Simon Yam, Gigi Lai and Ben Ng. When the emotional
heart of a film is a silver cigarette lighter, you know a film is in a deep
creative crisis. You could perhaps buy a Happy Meal at McDonalds with the
budget of this film. Most of it seems to take place at a bookstall, a nearly
empty apartment and a cheap outdoor alleyway restaurant. The soundtrack primarily
consists of what sounds like a tacky Karaoke synthesizer wobble that plays
over and over again during all the slow turgid parts – which would be about
95% of the film.
Simon plays a triad honcho whose best days are clearly behind him. He has
two followers – yes two whole followers – and one manages the other. Where
I work that would be considered an extra layer of management – but even with
only two followers, Simon constantly has to keep them out of trouble. One
of them is continuously banging heads with Ben Ng – another Triad guy on
his way up – and he keeps getting beaten up for his efforts.
At the same time – in one of those isn’t
HK a small world – both Simon and his follower unknowingly fall in love with
the same woman – Gigi. Ooh – and she’s dying of some unnamed ailment that
can only be cured in the USA. So the follower decides to make enough money
to send her to the States and pay for her operation. To do this he starts
selling drugs in Ng’s joints – and of course gets not only beaten up, but
also urinated on. But eventually, he comes to Gigi and heroically throws a
two-inch thick wad of HK currency on the table in front of her and says that
should be enough to save you. Clearly, this guy hasn’t spent much time dealing
with the US health care system!
The low point though had to be one of those juxtaposition scenes where they
go back and forth between two scenes – contrasting the two. This can be a
wonderful cinematic device such as in Godfather III in which an opera is
being watched by Pacino while a number of hits are taking place on his orders.
Here they alternate between a gang fight and Ben Ng grunting on the toilet.
Not the stuff of great cinema – and possibly a metaphor as to where HK film
may be headed.
I felt like this film would never finish, but at some point it became a test
of endurance – was I tough enough to make it to the end – fool that I am
– I did. And so by the way did the silver cigarette lighter!