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

Rating:

4

Year of release: 2005

Genre: action/comedy

Director: Jingle Ma

Action director: Alien Sit

Cinematographer: Jingle Ma

Producer: John Chong

Editor: William Chang

Music: Tommy Wai

Writer: Jingle Ma

Stars: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Hsu Chi, Richie Ren

Rated IIA for comedic violence

DVD Information

Company: Mega Star

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin

Subtitles: Chinese, English

Extras: trailers, data bank, making-of featurette, deleted scenes

Notes: A solid 2-disc set.

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Seoul Raiders

Tokyo Raiders is one of my (and quite a few other people's) least favorite Hong Kong movies, but it did make a profit, so I guess a sequel was inevitable. Released during Chinese New Year -- when most every movie is packed with stars and offers stories that don't make you think too hard in order to pack audiences in -- Seoul Raiders still stands out as something totally plastic and banal; this is about as generic and lack-luster as films come. While Seoul Raiders isn't as bad as Tokyo Raiders (frankly, that isn't saying much), it still manages to bore, perplex and downright annoy the viewer at many points during its' running time.

Tony Leung Chiu-Wai returns as Lam, a freelance secret agent who is working for the US government to try and find some plates that can produce perfect counterfeit dollars. After Lam (with an assist from JJ, a thief played by Hsu Chi) gains the plates, they are taken by a US double-agent named Owen (Richie Ren). So Lam grabs a trio of cute assistants and sets out to grab back the plates... and that's about it for the plot. Hong Kong movies are known for the "flying paper" style in that a lot of stuff gets improvised on-set. However, I'm really starting to wonder if many of these movies have scripts at all. Like many recent HK pictures, Seoul Raiders was written by several people, and they still couldn't come up with something at least halfway original -- there's a big "plot twist" near the end which does really nothing except for stretching out the movie for another fifteen minutes.

And if the script wasn't bad enough, the directing is even worse. Someone really needs to tell Jingle Ma to take an early retirement. At best, his films are generic fare, such as his previous effort Silver Hawk, which is probably the final nail for Michelle Yeoh's action movie career. At worst, Ma produces horribly-paced, over-produced crud that represents the worst the Hong Kong movie industry has to offer, like the previously mentioned Tokyo Raiders. Seoul Raiders falls somewhere in the middle. The movie really just seems to consist of chase sequences (none of which were very exciting) along with poorly-choreographed and over-edited fight sequences, but manages to squeak by by the charm of its stars. But it still begs the question -- what the hell was Tony Leung thinking when he agreed to do this movie? Did he lose big to Jingle Ma in mah-jong or something? I guess the payday allows him to concentrate more on fare like 2046, but, really, doesn't he have at least a few bucks socked away so he doesn't have to do pictures like this to pay the bills? At least Hsu Chi played it smart and only appeared in a few scenes.

At any rate, Seoul Raiders represents one of the bigger problems facing film-making worldwide these days. It just tries too hard to be cool and instead comes off as a marketing ploy instad of a movie. Chow Yun-Fat spitting out his toothpick before shooting someone in the head in Hard Boiled? That's cool. Tony and Richie having what amounts to a slow-motion slap-fight while a bad ripoff of "Battle Without Honour" (aka "O-Ren's Theme" from Kill Bill) blares in the background? That's not cool. Even when you take Seoul Raiders as the piece of brainless fluff that it is, I highly doubt that even the most diehard Tony Leung or Hsu Chi fan will find little more than a smidgen of entertainment value with this dud.