Mou seung (2018) Reviews

• A Cinematic Homage to A Better Tomorrow, A Perfect Counterfeit in Non Liner Narrative Style

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  Project Gutenberg (2018) is clearly a non liner narrative structure film because audiences find that every thing we see after the arrest of the protagonist, counterfeit artist Lee Man (Aaron Kwok) who is extradited from Thailand to Hong Kong police jurisdiction ''counterfeited'' his background story and the mysterious antagonist "Painter" as someone played by the Hong Kong super star Chow Yun-fat. Every one knows Chow Yun-fat as Mark Lee. And this film actually paid homage to the well known legendary character. However "Painter" 's personality in this film is cruel, bloodless and more close to mafia. Like Rigor Mortis (2013), audiences also realise that the entire story is layered fictional reality which created by the inner character. 'Fictionalised reality within the fictional tale' was consciously dealt by its fictional character itself. It's typical defamiliarization in narrative structure however the risk is possible disappointment of audiences who want and believe the simple and not layered fictional reality in the simple fictional tale. Non-linier narrative can create parallel world, a small universe with in narrative structure like In the Mouth of Madness (1994; Dir. John Carpenter). For instance, the cruiser sequences are repeated twice from different action Lines of HK police and the counterfeit bank notes organisation led by "Painter". This is a surrealistic intercut rather than cross cutting in liner narrative films. For editorial aspect, the uniqueness of ''montage sequence'' is that its aesthetics is more affected by photoshop-like layer concepts. We can see characters shapes are turned into layers in mono colour, and dissolve into the next land scape layer which appears from the cropped shapes of characters. When Lee Man (Aaron Kwok) travels through Europe, Asia, North America with his counterfeit colleagues to seek perfect counterfeit technology to imitate the new US dollars in 1996, this kind of montage sequences appear. Besides this, the fake explosion scene in the testimony of Lee Man (Aaron Kwok) especially represents the aesthetic nature of the entire film. This methodologically deceptive solution fits the theme ''counterfeit''. In which Lee Man's testimony about the upcoming violence from ''The Painter"ends up with '' imaginal explosion'', after that film reverses the time to back to ''reality'' from this imagination. The director Felix Chong throughly did his research on counterfeit bank notes and purchased a 7-ton real currency press, which cost HK$100,000, which was able to create realistic looking counterfeit currency, which had to be reported to the Monetary Authority. The art director Alan Mak should be mentioned due to his huge contributions to this film. You can not find more realistic counterfeit banknotes film in the past decades. Moreover, this counterfeit film's methodological solutions and its non liner narrative structure fit the nature of its theme ''counterfeit''. This artistic achievement should be complemented. This film explores fictional reality and its fictional universe with in a fictional film. The content and form are perfectly unified in to ''counterfeit'' structure and its ''counterfeit''stories. This is one of successful Asian film cooperation among Mainland China, Hong Kong and Thailand. The quality is only getting better.

• Generic movie but with a star cast

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  If you are expecting something epic or new with this film look elsewhere. The plot is very familiar and has been used many times by other films. Though it is entertaining throughout the 2hrs, it lacks that spark of originality which brings the film down to becoming very predictable. Chow Yun Fat leads this film with a very enjoyable performance although him alone can't prop up this entire film. The ending of the film brings down the whole presentation with a cheap and unsatisfying way of concluding the movie. It feels as though the audience spent 2hrs for nothing, you'll know what I mean after you've watched the film. There were no clever hints that helped build up to that sort of conclusion. They can honestly do better without that specific choice of an ending.

• classic HK movie!

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  No one can deny how Chou is important in HK movie in 80s. You cannot imagine that he is actually an unimportant role in the whole story :) It is not that kind of traditional police and gangster movie with only boom and block buster. The process of counterfeiting cash is also new to audience, at least to me! The mystery of "painter" is well worth discovering as the plots goes on. It is not simply about split personality as the usual movies, which is unable to finish a complete story without it. The ending matches "counterfeit" pretty well, given 90% of movies is talking about how they successfully cheat and hide. The idea of the story is awesome! However, 2 points are deducted for ending. Don't know if it is for the reason to be on publicly for all audience. The final explosion seems unnecessary. This movie still gives us hope as Infernal Affairs: HK movie is not dying. Looking forward to the sequel! (I believe there will be)

• Worth seeing

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  Hugely invested, super casting, the movie should have been a classic action film. The acting of Chow is beyond doubt fantastic. Aaron, to me, is the first movie that showcase his best actor acting skill. All his previous movie is lawyer or police officer. This role here as a villian gives him ample chance for applying his already matured acting ability. Female lead is not first line actress in television. But she is surprisingly able to carry her role quite well together with the 2 male superstar. The plot of the movie is not in par with the super casting. The story in the first half is ok. But towards the second half the storyline is a bit loosened, losing the excitement that the first half is carrying. Scenes of killing are excessive and unnecessary. It is as if the killing scene is added only for the purpose of showing off Chow's previous hero role in movies. It is not in line with the original plot where Chow should never be caught. Otherwise the film is on the whole above standard and worth seeing. It is my impression wherever Chow is present in movie, the movie would be biased towards showing off his hero quality. And hence the continuity of the story is destroyed ans unnecssary scenes are added. This is the cost of seeing Chow in movie.

• A Smart Adaptation

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  Obviously, the basic structure of the whole story comes from Bryan Singer's "The Usual Suspects" in 1995, but the focus of the former is the shock when the puzzle was revealed. The focus of this film is to expose the characters. Therefore, if the audience does not overstate the specific behavior of the scriptwriter in the process of writing the script, the two films actually have their own wonderful points. In addition, the surface story of the Hong Kong-style crime film really maintains the entertainment effect in the first half of the film, and Chow Yun-fat's highly romantic performance is actually a kind of figurative externalization of the character, which can be understood as an extension of the theme of the story.