ENTER THE FAT DRAGON

Release Date: Malaysia, 23 Jan 2020

Genre: Action / Comedy

Running Length: 1:37

Cast: Donnie Yen, Niki Chow, Teresa Mo Sun Kwan, Wong Jing, Louis Cheung

Director: Kenji Tanigaki, Wong Jing

Screenplay: Wong Jing, Lui Koon-nam, Ronald Chan Kin-hung

ENTER THE FAT DRAGON is a throwback to the good old days of Hong Kong movies released during the Lunar New Year. It's entertaining, funny, features recognizable cameos, has a good message and of course, a happy ending. What's missing is probably the main cast appearing at the end credits wishing the audience all the good sayings during this festive season. 

The plot is fairly easy to follow. After getting dumped by his fiance (Niki Chow) and coupled with an unfortunate demotion to the basement evidence room, supercop Fallon Zhu (Donnie Yen) copes by stuffing his face. As a result, he gains massive weight (but yet, he is still agile and can pack a punch and a mean kick). 

In order to redeem himself back to the squad, he agreed to take on a simple assignment of escorting a Japanese convict back to Japan. But of course, nothing goes according to plan and soon, chaos ensues with the Yakuza thrown into the mix. 

There are no particular standout action scenes in this movie but overall, the kung-fu scenes are well choreographed and it comes in think and fast. There is no notable difference between Yen in a fat suit fighting bad guys vs Yen without the fat suit fighting bad guys. In fact, fat Yen's punches are much more powerful, often sending the baddies flying through the air during the brawl scenes. 

  

One would expect the filmmakers here to pay homage to classic Bruce Lee movies, but instead, they chose to reference some of Donnie Yen's own classic fight scenes from movies such as SPL and Flash Point.  And the outcome is LOL hilarious!

    

Enter The Fat Dragon will not go down as one of the must-see movies of Donnie Yen but if you have 2 hours to spare and some pocket money to get some popcorn and soda, you'll have a good time at the cinema. 

RATING: 7/10 

THE LEAKERS (Malaysia, 21 Jun 2018)

Genre: Action / Thriller

Running Length: 1:43

Cast: Julian Cheung, Francis Ng, Charmaine Sheh, Louis Cheung, Kent Cheng, Sam Lee 

Director: Herman Yau

Screenplay: Erica Lee, Li Sheng

What's this movie about?
A Zika epidemic breaks out in Malaysia and rapidly spreads across the region. A local Malaysian pharmaceutical company claims to have a new but unapproved medicine which could cure the infected patients. In the race for time to get this medicine out, a Hong Kong journalist hot on this case and the eldest son of the pharma company are found dead. It's up to a Malaysian police (Julian Cheung) and a HK police officer (Francis Ng) to investigate and uncover the truth.   

Highlights!

• Shot in Penang! Most of this film was shot in Malaysia and that was the main reason I went to check out this film. There's just something patriotic seeing your country used as the backdrop for an 'internationally' released film.  
• Francis Ng's performance. To be fair Julian Cheung's performance ain't half bad (his command on the Bahasa Melayu language is "boleh tahan"). But he is easily out-shined here by Ng's nuanced performance where his character uses humour to mask the pain and disappointment he was going through in his domestic life. There is this scene where he had to break a difficult news to a hospitalized patient - wow, that was some serious acting from Francis.    

Lowlights

• An overly convoluted plot. Credit should be given to the film's writers for crafting an ambitious narrative (instead of the staple cops-versus-robbers plot) but the end product ended up somewhat short. 
• Boring action sequences. I used to love HK action but lately it has been just uninspiring. Cold War 2 got my hopes up a little on this front but the action in this film seems to confirm its downward trend. 

In summary
As much as I would like HK films to continue doing what they do best; cops-versus-robber, I am rooting for them to produce successful character-driven action thriller movies worthy of Hollywood standards (or even Korean or Japanese) to spark a revival for its film industry. Unfortunately, THE LEAKERS isn't one of them. 

RATING: 5/10