Cocktail
Film review by Lee Alon
Cultural relativity can be such a funny thing.
What's trivial in one place can be all the rage in another, and somebody's
taboo often ends up someone else's hot ticket for the day. But HK stands unique
in its ability to transform items considered par for the course everywhere
into sensational material for the masses, and the nightlife has long been
one of these topics. For those with functioning memories, the years just
before and after the turn of the millennium bring back flashes of rave movies,
hair tossing, and Fing pills overflowing from glass jars. Now those were
the days, and they're still here apparently because going out for a drink
works yet in Hong Kong as viable subject matter for a movie.
Not so long ago Drink Drank Drunk came out to good results, but that one
was more of a serious comedy and certainly enjoyed the kind of production
Cocktail lacks. By the way, Cocktail itself has nothing to do with Tom Cruise
or his newly arrived offspring, so don't get your hopes up. And while the
80's US flick for its part shied away from the liquor per se, this current
release does focus more on the bottled ones, with characters looking almost
as cool as Starship Enterprise crewmembers in that bar they had, the one
where glasses fizzled and gave off odd puffs of blue smoke.
So, drinking and bars are still being touted as something forbidden and tantalizing.
Strange but manageable as pretext for telling a bigger tale, if one exists.
That's not always the case with Cocktail, where although watchability isn't
too big of a problem, it surely doesn't rank among the cream of the crop
either. At the story's core is one local dive, known alternately as Heaven
and Hell or Half-Mortal, take your pick as the people subtitling this DVD
couldn't. The place is run by Candy (awesome rocker and comedienne Candy
Lo), a shadowy figure with a heart of gold and everlasting desire to forget
via imbibing alcohol and maybe a few other substances. Candy's bar has a
minor reputation for attracting
oddball individuals and cheap drinkers, as the boss when particularly
disheartened freely announces happy hours where everything's on the house.
Enter all this, rookie bartender Paul (Endy Chow), a natural with a keen
eye for customizing mixes tailored to people's personalities. He almost immediately
builds himself a following, not least of which is co-pourer Stella (Race
Wong). The latter instantly takes to Paul and wants to make him her better
half, but as usually happens after hours, there's competition in the form
of sultry Yuki, a broken young lady done by Chloe Chiu. Paul juggles not
only these relationship problems, but also several troubling clients and
their pursuant issues, like car sales mogul Michael (Johnson Lee), who's
big into abusing subordinates and anyone else that comes along.
There's essentially no impetus to the plot in Cocktail, a brave move in view
of its sparse settings and short breadth. Unlike other bar movies, it purposefully
zeroes in on a specific location and group of people, eschewing atmosphere-building
or a sense of context within a place and subculture. You get the impression
they didn't want to address HK's nightlife as a whole, and as a consequence
this film could actually be set anywhere.
The main content highlight in Cocktail, therefore, must be its emphasis on
Paul's regret and pain over his alcoholic father's (Lawrence Cheng) death
from liver failure. There's a plethora of mental recollections from Paul
explaining their problematic, but ultimately loving, relationship, and we
receive a powerful rendition of just how hurt he is in the wake of his father's
passing. Overall, good input from relatively inexperienced Endy Chow, and
probably the only real reason Cocktail is worth sitting down to watch.
For sure, modest plugging of Blue Girl beer and having only negatively-portrayed
characters smoke aren’t compelling incentives to spend an hour and a half
with this release. There have been numerous other nightlife and bar movies
set in HK, Taiwan and China over the years, and this obviously isn't the
best of them, but it's an enjoyable mixture of story and emotion, and doesn't
leave a bitter after taste, which often is good enough.
Rating: 6/10
Directed by Herman Yau
Starring Candy Lo, Endy Chow, Race Wong, Chloe Chiu
2006, Cantonese, 90 minutes
Contact Lee Alon here
Other "View from the Brooklyn Bridge" Film Raters:
Brian: 5.5
Steve: 5.5