Cross
(aka 6th Commandment)
2012; directed by Daniel Chan, Steve Woo, Lau Kin-Ping, and Hui Shu-Ning

During the Golden Age of Hong Kong movies, Simon Yam was one of the undisputed kings of Category III (Hong Kong's version of the NC-17 rating) cinema, playing the lead in a series of "video nasties", including an indelible and classic turn as a demented lunatic in the wonderfully sleazy Dr. Lamb. So the prospect of seeing Yam as a serial killer is certainly an enticing one, especially for fans of the seedier side of Hong Kong films. Sadly, the idea here is much better than the actual execution, which is more than a bit of a incoherent mess.

So how bad is this movie? The fact that it had to go through four directors to get finished in the first place should be one major neon tinted flashing sign that things are rotten in Denmark -- or rather, Hong Kong, as the case may be. Just to reaffirm how much Cross scrapes the bottom of the cinematic barrel, upon the recent US release of the film by Well Go USA, the original writer and director, Daniel Chan, took to his Facebook page to give such choice quotes as "the trailer is better than the film" and "please don't buy the DVD, I haven't even seen this cut myself, if you are still interested, please download illegally". Ouch.

Cross does actually start out well enough. Yam plays Lee Leung, a man whose wife commits suicide. A devout Catholic, Lee believes that this means his wife's soul will not be able to go to heaven. Wanting to save people from suffering the same fate, he takes to lurking on an internet forum dedicated to suicide, finding people who want to kill themselves and doing them a "favor". It's an interesting concept and the initial thirty minutes or so are good, with Yam delivering a suitably creepy performance puncutated by some flashes of gore.

After that, things run off the rails completely. The story becomes totally incomprehensible, with an attempt to throw in a twist that would be laughable if it actually made a lick of sense. This is obviously "flying paper" film-making at its absolute worst; even Wong Jing would label this movie as trash. More damningly, this is just a deadly dull movie. The film only runs about eighty-five minutes, but it struggles to get to that point, recycling a good deal of footage, strained through headache-inducing juinor high level Photoshop after effects -- and seven (yes, SEVEN) minutes worth of credits, which prominently thanks Lau Kin-Ping and Hui Shu-Ning for finishing the movie. Thanks for nothing, guys. Thanks for absolutely nothing.

RATING: 3