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Nominations
at the Hong Kong Film Awards 2002:
Best Picture
Best Cinematography (Peter Pau)
Best Sound Design (Tsang King-Cheung)
Best Original Film Score (Henry Lai)
Best Original Film Song: Huiyi zhi qian, wangji zhi hou
(Before Memory, After Forgetting)
Music: Henry Lai
Lyrics: Alex Law
Performed by: Wong Fung
It feels
a little uncomfortable to criticize two talents like Mabel
Cheung and Alex Law. On every Mabel Cheung movie there is
an Alex Law involved (they're married actually) and their
finest hour together could might as well by my personal favourite
An Autumn's Tale. Their production Beijing Rocks
is a more youth oriented film, revolving around music but
the end result is very much a mixed bag.
Michael
(Daniel Wu) is a Hong Kong singer/songwriter arriving in China
to avoid his legal problems for the time being. Through his
rich and influential father (Richard Ng) some of his music have been produced
but right now he's also under the pressure to deliver more.
He meets up with a local Beijing rockband, headed by their
singer Road (Geng Le). They go from village to village performing
and trying to make people understand their message in music.
Michael joins them on their journeys and hope to gather inspiration
and him becoming friends with Road's girlfriend Yang Yin (Shu
Qi) is perhaps one step towards that...
Starting
with Mabel Cheung's narrative, it has much difficult getting off the ground.
Some movies can take as much as 30 minute before their true
plot is revealed but for Beijing Rocks it takes a
full hour. We just follow the band and it's characters around
for a long while but nothing seems to happen. It's almost
like a really tedious documentary. When it eventually finds
its plot it becomes more compelling but basically the movie
is nothing more than a watchable love triangle drama. Mabel showed in An
Autumn's Tale that you don't need to complicate the proceedings
if you have good writing and actors but what is required of you
though is making sure to maintain interest throughout, especially from
the top. Beijing Rocks does therefore drag but the
remaining 50 minutes makes the experience worthwhile.
Alex
Law's script finds it's flow and it's characters from this
point on. They may not have huge depth (each gets a CGI enhanced
intro though) but from the hour mark they become more interesting
to follow at least. The love story has nothing new to offer
but seeing as I think Beijing Rocks is more aimed at
younger audiences, the characters consciously aren't overly complex as
written. It's a story of fighting, fighting to be heard and
fighting to make the outsiders understand. That's certainly
a theme that young people can relate to more and maybe, just
maybe, they aren't that critical of the film. They might catch
some subtext those of us past childhood are missing.
Maybe
in an effort to reach the kids even more, Mabel and DP Peter
Pau have created a very stylized look to the film. In certain
moments there's almost a hyper kinetic feel to the way scenes
are shot, which I didn't like but I guess a movie about music
sometimes have to look like an MTV video. Sad really. I did
like some of the slow motion used but even that got taken
a few notches too far. The calm and minimalistic direction
seen later in the film and in previous Mabel Cheung movies works so much
better and I wish they had dared to do that from the beginning
to end. Peter Pau's cinematography is gorgeous to look at
though when it's calm though.
The actors
also find their flow at the same time as director Cheung and
Shu Qi almost single handedly saves the movie on an acting level. She plays the girl clinging
one to the one she thinks is forever right for her but befriends
another one, hence the triangle drama. Not that Shu takes
the character to new undiscovered levels but her smile is
enough to charm us. Sweet, adorable and displaying a good
amount of emotions and, again, she is a very big reason why
Beijing Rocks becomes a worthwhile experience.
Daniel
Wu displayed pretty good acting chops in the 1999 movie Purple
Storm but has not been part of that many good projects
since then. This movie, despite its flaws, is probably the
best I've seen him do after Purple Storm. As you may
know, Daniel was born and raised in America so Cantonese is
not his first language. With Beijing Rocks he had to
challenge himself even more because this is largely a Mandarin
speaking role. I can't really tell you how good or bad he
speaks the dialect but thankfully he doesn't flip flop between
his Chinese and English like he did in Gen-X Cops.
In terms of acting he pulls off the character decently and
one thing to remember is that Daniel is still learning. He's
not there yet but there's undeniable talent in that boy, just
have to found more good roles on a regular basis. Mainland actor Geng Le
has a few nice scenes, especially in the section where he
leaves his band and in a rare drama performance we see Richard
Ng.
Mabel
Cheung's Beijing Rocks has a basic structure that
sadly blooms very late. It becomes a decent film in the end
but there's no denying the weaknesses present. Have patience
and you'll see that you get into this romance, mostly because
of Shu Qi, eventually.
The
DVD:
A nice 1.78:1 anamorphic print from Megastar. Grain is present
in some shots as well as some light speckling. Other than
that, it's a great transfer.
The Mandarin Dolby Digital 5.1 track uses your entire setup
to involve you. Music plays a big part and that sounds clear
and so does dialogue. The movie was shot in Mandarin synch
sound with only limited use of Cantonese.
The English subtitles contains no errors as far as I could
see and Megastar provides subtitles for the
songs featured as well. In one scene however concerning SMS messaging,
the text is shown a few seconds before we see it on screen.
Traditional and simplified Chinese subtitles are also provided.
There's slightly more extras on this Megastar disc than your
usual Hong Kong dvd, main one being the alternate ending
(4 minutes 8 seconds). It's more of an extended one really
and while interesting, it puts a spin to the end that I didn't
really like. Kudos to Megastar for presenting this segment
in anamorphic widescreen and English subtitles (burned in).
The Making Of & Trailers area is pretty self-explanatory.
The teaser and theatrical trailer is here plus a 17 minute
48 second Making Of (no English subtitles). A music video for, what I assume is, the nominated song appears but it consists
only of movie clips. The rest of the bonus material is text
based starting with the synopsis screen that is also on the
back cover. Casts & Credits holds a listing for the most
essential cast & crew with short bios/filmographies for
Alex Law, Mabel Cheung, Daniel Wu, Shu Qi, Geng Le and Peter
Pau.
reviewed by Kenneth
Brorsson
Thanks to Liersi for providing the Chinese title of the nominated
song.
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