Review | Film review: Two Thumbs Up - goofy Hong Kong comedy
Lau Ho-leung's directorial debut rides on the star power of Francis Ng and Simon Yam.
Director: Lau Ho-leung
Category: IIB (Cantonese)
Opening with a montage of Hong Kong and Malaysia, past and present, Lau Ho-leung's directorial debut looks like it will either quickly spiral out of control or prematurely run out of steam.
The outlandish hairstyles worn in the film by Francis Ng Chun-yu and Simon Yam Tak-wah contribute to this adrenalised crime drama-comedy's crazy vibe.
Then there's the outlandish plot, which has loser gangster Big F (Ng) and his three long-time friends — Crazy B (Yam), East L (Mark Chen Ho-nam) and Johnny T (Patrick Tam Yiu-ming) posing as cops to rob a cross-border truck carrying corpses that are stuffed with cash. They achieve the disguise by giving their red minibus a paint job to resemble a police Emergency Unit van and securing police uniforms.
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Par for the course for these types of movies, things don't go according to plan. On the evening that the desperados take action, they cross paths with another group that has come up with the exact same idea — except that rival gang has AK47s instead of the BB guns carried by the Big F and his boys.
Throw in a dedicated policeman (Leo Ku Kui-kei) in pursuit of the lawbreakers on nothing more than a bicycle, and subplots involving a little girl and an ice cream seller who emotionally connect with various members of Big F's gang, and this movie becomes a real hotchpotch of characters and ideas that even the most experienced of filmmakers would have trouble holding together.
Against the odds, however, Two Thumbs Up does deliver some fun; due in large part to its experienced principal actors handing in performances that are personable, even while larger than life. Technically, cinematographer Pakie Chan Chor-Keung and editor Chan Ki-Hop's inventive work catches the eye too — but sometimes in ways that can be more distracting than entertaining.
