Gun and Rose

[Phoenix]

I had been looking forwards to watching this film for quite a long time. It seems, like so many other films, they tried to fit as much action from the film as they could into the original trailer. Sadly, the trailer completely mis-sells this film, though.

It starts off with some bizarre pacing, with some great action and seems to be some kind of heroic bloodshed film with a story about family rivalry amongst three brothers. For the action they used some acrobatics and wire work to make it pretty awesome looking. Regarding the pacing, in the first 10 or 15 minutes the film makers seem to be in a rush to get the opening out of the way as quickly as possible, jumping from scene to scene. It struck me as a bit odd but nothing too unusual, but when I saw where the film went for the rest of it's running time, I was left very surprised and disappointed. It's almost as if the creators were like, 'Let's get the good stuff out of the way as quickly as possible, so we can spend as much time as needed on making this film crap...Yeah!'.

I have never had a problem with comedy in older HK movies, and have definitely never hated it like so many fans seem to. I think they hate it because western films, if they are of a serious tone, will never inject some slapstick or crude humour into a serious film, so to a lot of western fans some of these HK films seems extremely strange. However, expecting some kind of heroic bloodshed film with amazing action (watch the trailer), I couldn't believe it when an hour of this film was just wasted, completely wasted on the most pointless plotting imaginable, with lots of non-funny humour.

When Andy Lau's sister remarked, as he jumped on top of his girlfriend, that he never involves her in such exciting games, I couldn't believe it- it seemed more messed up than anything in The Untold Story or Ebola Syndrome. Anyway, that was just a throwaway scene- I'm going off on a tangent.

This film could have been great, I don't know who was in charge of the action, but they shot some great looking stunts and gunfights. Problem is, their talents were almost completely wasted- what a shame. The opening of the film and around 5 minutes near the end are like completely different films to the rest of the running time. It's almost as if the writer was trying to quit a heroin habit by using crack and LSD, with some laughing gas, when he/she wrote the rest of the film. Actually, of course, it probably wasn't written in advance and they were just shooting from day to day.

[Phoenix]

Ummm... has anyone else seen it? If so, what did you think?

[Cognoscente]

It has its moments but I prefer Return Engagement, which had some of the same cast & crew. Joe Cheung was more suited to the tone of the heroic bloodshed genre than Clarence Fok. Joe previously directed Flaming Brothers whereas Fok had no such experience. The closest thing to a HB movie that Fok had done up to that point was The Dragon from Russia, which had the potential to be a more serious film had it not been for Cinema City's insistence on there being lots of broad comedy.

Then again, a script can have a big influence on how a director is perceived. Wong Kar-Wai wrote both Flaming Brothers and Return Engagement, so it creates a chicken-and-the-egg scenario when trying to decipher who was responsible for the quality. Wai Ka-Fai, on the other hand, had yet to find his voice as a crime writer, which he later found with Peace Hotel, Too Many Ways To Be No. 1 and Fulltime Killer.

As a serious storyteller, Joe Cheung had a stronger foundation to work from. He directed dark films like Revenge in Hong Kong and Bet on Fire whereas Clarence was becoming an increasingly whimsical filmmaker. For example, Naked Killer (released in the same year as Gun and Rose) has a fair amount of whimsy for what's supposed to be a Category III movie featuring mutilators and rapists.