May
27
2008
The Pye-Dog
Posted by luna6 Leave a Comment
Movie: The Pye-Dog
Release Date: November 15, 2007
Country: Hong Kong
Director: Chi-kin Kwok
Starring: Eason Chan, Yuan Lin
Runtime: 101 Min
Editor Rating: 6.0
Users Rating: 7 
(4 votes)
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“The Pye-Dog”, directed by Chi-kin Kwok (Derek Kwok), is a mish mash of the good and bad. The strongest aspect about the film would be its premise; concerning an oddball gangster/hitman, a young boy, the young boy’s father, and the young boy’s teacher whom the gangster has affection for. The basic elements from this movie recalls a bit of Luc Besson’s “Leon (The Professional)” with several other genres thrown in for good measure. Even with the slight familiarity of the story, the movie felt entirely fresh and never like a cheaper derivative work. What was not so good about “The Pye-Dog” were the film’s poorly helmed action sequences, overall bland lensing, and a soundtrack that wreaked with ickiness. Even with these complaints, the film still managed to interest due to that interesting premise.
In “The Pye-Dog” Eason Chan plays Dui, a quirky guy that was recruited into a gang at an early age due to a lack of family support. His boss (Eric Tsang) then assigns Dui a new job; work as a janitor in an elementary school. Dui’s objective is to kidnap the son of a rival gang member with only the names of the boy’s father and mother to go on. While working at the elementary school Dui makes friends with Lam Chi Wang, an elementary school student that seems to be a mute. Dui also befriends Lam’s teacher, Miss Cheung, whom he takes an active interest in.
One day, Dui walks Lam back to his home and discovers that Lam lives with his grandmother in a shabby apartment. The grandmother tells Dui that this is the first time Lam has ever brought a friend back to their home. Shortly afterwards, the grandmother becomes ill and hospitalized. While at the hospital, Dui then makes the realization that Lam Chi Wang is the student he was ordered to kidnap. Complicating matters even more, Dui promised the grandmother that he would take care of Lam while she was hospitalized and Lam’s father, the head of a rival gang, then comes back to Hong Kong to see his son.
Performances were adequate all around, with no one in particular standing out. The familiar Eric Tsang, an actor in a gazillion HK movies, was almost unrecognizable in a black wig and pudgier than normal physique – a minor surprise in itself. Susan Shaw, who played Lam’s grandmother, recently won a best supporting actress award at the Hong Kong Film Awards for her performance in the “Pye-Dog.” Nothing against her performance, but if her performance was the best of the lot, it says more about her competition than her non-memorable performance.
“The Pye-Dog” does begin on a high note, introducing the main characters and their background in innovative ways. There were also several impressive shots of Lam’s drab apartment complex, something like Gotham City set within the Hong Kong world, but the film never seemed to extrapolate on that impressive backdrop in any meaningful way. The rest of the film was lensed in a bland manner, briefly brightened by the occasional use of split screens, intertitles and the rotating camera style seen in the climatic scene in “Infernal Affairs.” The worst moment visually was the assassination attempt in the amusement center. That sequence looked downright clumsy and lacked the imagination of the rest of film.
The soundtrack had the ickiness found in another recent hong kong film, and just like that film, the corny songs usually signaled a corny scene to follow. One of the most pivotal scenes in the movie (the Christmas show) involved the use of a downright unexpected rendition of Debbie Boone’s “You Light Up My Life.” This scene could have been entirely riveting or flat-out cheesy. Unfortunately for the film, it came out as flat-out cheesy. Rather than letting Lam sing the song in its entirely, the scene segued midway into a non-nondescript Dido-meets-Celine Dion-in-a-karaoke bar version of that song. Bummer.
If you can tolerate all of these flaws, none of which were absolute show-stoppers, than you’ll likely find a solid film in “The Pye-Dog.” Yes, its an interesting film that’s slightly different than the rest, but it could have been better.
Cast:
Eason Chan – Dui
Yuan Lin – Miss Cheung
Chun-fai Man – Wang
Yam Yam Siu – Grandmother
George Lam – Nui
Eric Tsang – Cha
Kwok Keung Cheung – hitman
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2007 Movie Reviews, Chinese Movies, Movie Reviews, Movies |