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Crazy Stone
2006; directed by Ning Hao

Despite having a low budget and being shot on HD video cameras, this 2006 production was a hit both on the Mainland and in Hong Kong. Certainly, having Andy Lau serving as a producer helped, but director Ning Hao's free-wheeling and breezy style factors in a lot here, making what could have been a stale comedy/heist movie "inspired" by pictures like Ocean's Eleven into a release that actually turns out to be funny, even to pasty white semi-drunken and fully grizzled reviewers such as yours truly.

The movie revolves around the titular stone, a large piece of jade unearthed during the renovations of a factory that is running on empty. The owner (Chen Zhonghua) gets the bright idea to hold an exhibition of the stone on the property in order to make enough money to pay off the company's debtors and enlists a former cop (Guo Tao) to guard the valuable jewel. The tantalizing swag brings in two rival groups of thieves: a bumbling trio led by Liu Hua, and a cold professional played by Teddy Lin. The factory owner's horny son (Peng Bo) adds more spice into the mix, as he looks to use the jade in order to get into the pants of his would-be conquests.

Crazy Stone

A major reason this movie is so fun is due to the characters. Sure, the movie displays a sense of inventive and kinetic film-making cut from the cloth of directors like Guy Ritchie combined with the rapid-fire pop-culture reference spewing sensibilities of a Stephen Chow "moy len tau" (aka "nonsense comedy") picture. Ultimately, though, a film like this, even with strong jokes providing the base, it's the characters -- and the audience's attachment to them -- which separates Crazy Stone apart from many Hong Kong/Chinese comedies, many of which fly right over any gwailo's ill-informed head.

Even though most of the characters involved here aren't exactly Rhodes scholars and have major flaws -- perhaps, in part, due to Mainland China's stringent censorship policies that mandate how "criminal" characters are portrayed on the screen, which, in turn undoubtedly influenced, at least to an extent, how Ning Hao crafted this production -- their actions are still very fun to watch and even a little compelling in a way, as one becomes interested in the resolutions, especially as the storylines start to intersect with each other towards the finale. It's exactly that sort of feeling that is transferred on to the audience which makes Crazy Stone a film worth watching.

RATING: 7

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