The Adventurers
1995
Director: Ringo Lam
Producer: Wong Jing
Stars: Andy Lau, David Chiang, Rosamund Kwan, Wu Chien-Lin, Paul Chun Pui
A young boy witnesses his parents being murdered. For twenty years, he represses the memories until he sees a picture of the murderer in the newspaper. He sets out to assassinate the man, but fails, and must go into hiding as an undercover operative for the CIA. His mission is simple: to take out the assassin (who is now a powerful arms dealer) by getting chummy with his daughter. But things get more complicated when he begins to fall for the daughter and realizes the consequences his actions will have on her.
The Adventurers starts out well, but once all the characters are in place and the plot is set in motion, things begin to fall apart. There is little in the way of character development, the plot is transparent (I could see the next "twist" coming a mile away), and, perhaps worst of all, there is no action. Ringo Lam's movies don't need a ton of action to be interesting -- Full Alert is good proof of this, but that movie had two good lead actors in it. In The Adventurers, we have Andy Lau attempting to act. There is one scene where he is supposed to be all dramatic as he is realizing just how trapped he is, but all little Andy can do is raise his voice and look constipated.
The movie does try to redeem itself at the end with some action, but it's too little, too late. Some guys get shot, some (well, a lot) of stuff blows up, but there's nothing behind it and so there's no interest for the viewer -- it's just pyrotechnic mastrubation. The only thing I really liked about The Adventurers was Rosamund Kwan's performance. She steps out from the usual goody two-shoes she plays, and breathes a nice bit of life into what is usually a stock character. It's too bad that it's the only piece of life in this movie -- despite its' high budget and star pedigree, The Adventurers comes off as plastic, lifeless, and perhaps most damningly, unoriginal as most of the Hollywood action dreck out there.
RATING: 4
Note: part of the reason for the film's failure may be due to Ringo Lam and Andy Lau's rocky relationship. Lau has been known for not listening to direction on shoots, and Lam is called "the dark-faced god" for his temper on-set -- so perhaps it was inevitable that these two personalities would clash. Even though the film did fairly well (mostly due to Lau's star power), it did not make its' large budget back. Lam would later go on to publically criticize Lau in interviews, which angered the star and his fans, leading to a backlash against the director (things were not helped by the fact that Lam's previous movie Burning Paradise, another big-budget affair, flopped at the box office). For better or worse, The Adventurers is the reason Lam started working in Hollywood on movies like Maximum Risk.
This DVD is available for purchase at www.hkflix.com
