The Great Magician

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Year of release: 2012

Genre: drama/comedy

Director: Derek Yee

Action directors: Stephen Tung, Benz Kong

Producers: Peggy Lee, Mandy Law

Writers: Derek Yee, Chun Tin-Nam, Lau Ho-Leung

Cinematography: Kita Nobuyasu

Editing: Kwong Chi-Leung

Music: Leon Ko

Stars: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Lau Ching-Wan, Zhou Xun, Paul Chun Pui, Wang Ya-Chao, Yan Ni, Tian Miao, Kenya Sawada, Wu Gang, Alex Fong, Lam Suet, Wang Zi-Wen, Daniel Wu, Tsui Hark, Vincent Kok

Rated IIA for mild violence

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Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Lau Ching-Wan lead an all-star cast in The Great Magician, a cinematic adaptation of a popular novel written by Zhang Haifan. Leung and Lau's chemistry and star power carries the film a long way, which is a good thing, because director Derek Yee, who is better known for darker fare such as One Nite in Mongkok and Shinjuku Incident, seems to be a bit lost helming this lighter Lunar New Year picture.

The film takes place in a small town in 1900's China, where the performer Chang Hsien (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) has arrived and started to amaze audiences with his feats of magic. Though his shows soon begin selling out, Chang's motive is not to make money, but to kidnap the area's ruling warlord, Bully Lei (Lau Ching-Wan). Ostensibly, this is to help out the townspeople, but Chang's true motive seems to be to win back his fiance, Liu Yin (Zhou Xun), who Bully has taken as one of his wives.

Lunar New Year films are not known for being deep material, and The Great Magician is no exception. It is technically a "dramedy", but the presented circumstances fall more to the comedy side of the equation. Thankfully, most of the jokes are actually funny, or at least amusing, and not loud and irritating as Chinese comedy can come off of to western viewers. The issue with this is that light comedy can't really hold many people's interest for over two hours, this reviewer included. There were many points that I wished the film would just get going instead of having the characters bicker and banter with each other yet again.

The Great Magician is also overstuffed in other ways. Like many Lunar New Year films, there is a good amount of stunt casting involved (such as one scene that has several directors such as Tsui Hark playing some of Bully's compatriots) that will delight local audiences and those well-versed in Chinese cinema, but may leave others cold. Also, the third act becomes very convoluted. With too many villains and allegiance switches thrown into the mix, it feels like the film-makers were grasping at straws as to how to end the movie. It's not enough to make The Great Magician come off like a bad movie overall, but this is one release that's definitely more intended for fans of the actors involved rather than a wider audience.

RATING: 6