This movie is available for purchase at www.hkflix.com

Rating:

5

AKA: Twins Effect 2, Huadu Chronicles, The Blade of the Rose

Year of release: 2004

Genre: action/comedy

Directors: Corey Yuen, Patrick Leung

Action director: Corey Yuen

Stars: Gillian Chung, Charlene Choi, Jaycee Chan, Daniel Wu, Donnie Yen, Wilson Chen, Edison Chen, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Qu Ying, Jackie Chan, Fan Bing Bing, Steven Cheung, Kenny Kwan

Rated IIA for mild violence

DVD Information

Company: Joy Sales

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin

Subtitles: Chinese, English

Extras: plot synopsis, character bios, making-of featurette, trailers, photo gallery, cast/crew listing, Twins music video

Notes: A very good DVD, but puzzingly the featurette is subitlted, while the menus are in Chinese only.

Related links:

Jackie Chan biography
Donnie Yen biography
Movie Review index
Main Page

The Twins Effect II

Yay! Another Twins movie! You know that we couldn't go more than three months without yet another on-screen pairing of the cutsey pop duo, right? Anyway, I have to admit that I actually liked the first Twins Effect movie. Sure, it was a dopey picture, but the girls had a certain amount of charm that made it enjoyable. However, like a batch of cotton candy that you've had one too many bites of or a six-pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade, Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi's sweet antics are starting to make me nauseous.

The results here aren't as bad as the duo's previous teaming in Protoge de la Rose Noire, but honestly, that's not saying too much. A lot of people have been saying Hong Kong cinema is dead in the water. I will grant that the output as a whole is nowhere near as good as it was during the "golden age" of the late 1980's-early 1990's, but there have still been some solid movies coming out of Hong Kong recently, like the excellent One Nite in Mongkok, a film which came out with little fanfare that has managed to impress most everyone who has seen it. However, The Twins Effect II is yet another example of what's wrong with the "big-budget" (relatively speaking) productions coming out of Hong Kong nowadays -- it just seems like the film-makers are throwing everything at the proverbial wall to see if anything sticks. Nothing really sticks here; it just kind of stinks.

There's a lot of stars, a veteran director, and a big dose of special effects, but none of these elements really seem to gel together to create a good movie. I'm sure I'm probably not the target audience for this film (since I'm a male over the age of thirteen), but even "bubblegum" or "popcorn" films can be highly entertaining if they're done right -- The Twins Effect II isn't. The script is meandering, the characters are under-developed, there's too much computer trickery in the action sequences, and (worst of all) the picture is just downright boring in parts.

I'm sure some of you might still want to check out The Twins Effect II since it's the on-screen debut of Jackie Chan's son, Jaycee. Well, based on his performance here, don't hold your breath waiting for him to take his dad's place in the Hong Kong movie food chain. He doesn't have the charisma or the moves of Papa Chan, and his acting is average to say the least. I'm not saying that he won't become a good actor one day (hell, I've even grown to somewhat like guys like Ekin Cheng and Edison Chen, actors which used to make bile rise in my throat) but as for now, the mantle of the "next big star" in Hong Kong cinema is still up for grabs.

Speaking of Jackie, there is a decent fight scene between him and Donnie Yen (who plays a character named "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" -- with five writers on the movie, you would think they could come up with a better moniker than that) but it uses too much CGI and doesn't create any real excitement. There's a lot of bells and whistles, but there's nothing genuine under the layers of special effects and fancy camerawork. It's a good metaphor for The Twins Effect II as a whole.

This is a nice-looking movie that has some good moments in it, but there's nothing here that really compels the viewer and actually pulls them into the film to make them truly care about the characters and what happens to them. Again, I know that The Twins Effect II isn't supposed to be a deep drama or hard-hitting action movie, but I have to think that even major fans of the Twins (or the other pop stars like Wilson Chen who were stuffed into the picture for marketing's sake) are starting to expect more from them than middle-of-the-road pablum like this.

Note: this is a sequel in name only to the first film. Mainland Chinese censors view vampires (the enemy in the previous installment) with a bad eye, and since the film-makers did not want to cut out any of the movie's potential market, the story for this film was changed to erase any reference to the undead.