Not a gold mine but still find bit of gold

Seeing the legendary Tong Leung and Andy Lau - as well as other big names in HK film, you may think this will be HK's next big movie. However, this is no Infernal Affairs. On the whole, this is an average movie executed relatively well - considering the HK film industry in the past decade. The biggest negative was the script, which was held up by a stella cast (mostly Tony), stunning visuals and a good soundtrack. It's worth a watch if you are a Tony fan or a HK cinema fan.

Characters/Acting:
As expected, Tony Leung has a stella performance and holds up the entire film with his charismatic acting. Tony played an amazing "crafty villan". Disappointingly, Andy's character is incredibly dull with very little interesting points despite marketed as Tony's "rival". The supporting characters are a lot more interesting than Andy's who accomplishes very little in the movie and did not even have 1/3 of the screen time. A complete waste of Andy's skills if you ask me.

Plot/Script:
The story is inspired by real events and quite interesting enough. The flashback focusing on Tony was fun to watch especially with Ton'y charisma. There are a few points in the script that were poorly written such as a few points that were mentioned and never addressed, There are some interesting twists in the movie as well as things that needed more explanation.

Execution:
The visuals are pretty good, there are quite a few visual metaphors and the cinematography is not bad. Visually, the movie looks great. The soundtrack is also quite memorable and helps elevate the movie.

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I actually believe TVB did a really good job with the first few episodes, and I actually thought this would become TVB black horse drama (i.e. the one that everyone sleeps on but is actually good). However, I am very disappointed to ay that the rest of the series did not live up to my expectations.

Firstly, there were too many characters, not that it's a bad thing if it were written well. All the characters are different and distinctive. In fact, the way those big cast was introduced was very good. However, their story arcs were very badly written, and unnatural. As much as I like to see TVB's "green leaf" actors get more spotlight, if they don't have a good role, there is no point.

The beginning, was very "The Academy"-like, but the later half of the story became more drama, and less "police", which is disappointing as there aren't many airport police procedurals. You'd think that after "Life on the Line" they could actually produce a well balance procedural drama.

The build up to the final villain was very cliche and unrealistic, which had a disappointing end.

Overall it is just an okay drama, with unfulfilled potential. I wish I could just rewrite the series, because there were so many interesting characters that did not get their story told properly, just because the writers decided to put a load of bs love story.

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A trend I find in recent TVB drama is that they are unnecessarily long. Drama's they believe will be "well received" are often 30+ episodes with a storyline that is only 20 episode long, dragging out the rest of the 10 episodes or ad some stupid storyline to the end, that is inconsistent with the story and make the characters do things out of character.

This is one drama that I thought will become a victim of this dumb trend, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not only does it have a good cast, but also a nice flowing storyline. Even though it could have ended 5 episodes earlier (I actually thought it was 30 eps long) the extra 5 episodes didn't fell out of place, and flowed quite smoothly.

Plot
The storyline isn't very creative. It is essentially another time-travel series in which Carlos Chan from 1948 wakes up in 2018, to which he needs to adapt to a new life with a family who was brought up differently to himself. Chan's character is a honourable, honest, good man who is shocked at his petty, deceitful decedents.
I'm happy they didn't overuse the fact that he's from the 1940s, but rather made use of his honourable personality instead.

Only thing I'll fault is they the should have dropped more hints that Joel's character was also from the 1940s by, say, making him have more knowledge of life in 1948, or liking a food that isn't common now ect. And it'll be nice to have more scenes of his grandchild (also played by Joel) since, to show how different they are, since that's how Macy found out.

Cast
John Chiang and Wayne Lai acted very well, making their characters feel believable. Even though Chiang's role began as a more "unlikable" character, he played the character well enough to be not too unlikable that the viewers hate him. His character's transition to "good" was believable too. Lai's character started out good, but later become corrupt with greed, but he made that very relatable as to not offend the viewers.

I was pleasantly surprised by Carlos Chan, it's the first time I've seen him act and was was very convincing. He stayed in character the entire time and was quite charming through out. I hope to see him more in the future. Joel Chan was okay. He has always been quite consistently good across all his dramas so I'm not surprised.

Considering how dull of a character Rosina played, she did quite well. She stayed in character, as a gentle, elegant Japanese girl, but she needs work on her facial expressions. It seems like she's trying to hard to pronounce her words right (I know she speaks Mandarin). Patricia Ha's face barley moved. She was almost robotic. I know her character was supposed to be elegant and cold hearted, but watching to close ups of her face was quite difficult for me.

Music
The music is hardly memorable o I have nothing to say. I quite like that theme song, considering how tired I am of listening to Fred (he's a good singer but the songs are usually boring). I'm surprised there was no ending theme or insert song, but the opening theme didn't feel over played at all and I don't want to listen to Hana or Stephanie any more so I don't mind.

Overall this was a good series, even though the plot was lacking a bit, it had a good flow and the acting and character interactions were brilliant and you can really feel the emotions and the motives behind each characters decisions. I give this 7.5, could have gotten an 8 is the story was more appealing but overall a good score, particularly compared to recent dramas TVB have been producing.

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The beginning of the series had some supernatural element in it in the form of a ghost. Later, since the actor who played the ghost left, there have been no more supernatural elements and became a normal sitcom. I am happy that the ghost left because he was the down fall of this series. His acting was over exaggerated and absolutely terrible. However, since this is an ongoing sitcom, there are many discontinuities and strange choices character behaviours. For example, at the start, the new employees (minor supporting, but reoccurring) were introduced as, quick witted but bad personality, slow but honest, and old but kind, yet theses qualities are no where to be found in those characters after this episode.

One major storyline that felt weird as a result is the Bok-si-Mandy-Mary love triangle in which Bok-si is rejected by Mary, but later gives Mandy a chance. I pretty sure the producers planned Mary and Bok-si to get together instead since, it is later revealed that Mary used to like Bok-si, despite that in the last hundred episodes, there are no signs of. But the audience probably liked Bok-si and Mandy, so they made Mandy into a bad girl (even though she was always nicer than Mary). I guess the audience still liked Bok-si and Mandy so the producers decided to stick with it, Mandy became a good girl again, and Mary never showed any signs of liking Bok-si again.

The members of the Hong family are all flawed and I find the father and the eldest sister to be the least likeable in the family. The father is stingy and shows obvious signs of favouritism, particularly his eldest daughter, then his youngest, and lastly his second daughter. He shows so much favouritism to his eldest daughter, that not only does he not stop her bullying, but praises her for it. The eldest daughter, is selfish and horrible. She was born a genius and looks down on her siblings for now having the same achievement as her. She only cares about herself, and her missing lover, yet doesn't even raise their child up right. The second daughter is a workaholic, and a typical HK-girl who wants to bag a rich guy. She is quick witted, capable and pretty. To me, she is the most interesting of the Hong family. The Youngest daughter is a bookworm who know nothing other then studying. She loves to study, but is socially awkward and cannot function in society. The uncle is played by Paul Sinn, who over exaggerates and unnatural. The grandson, who's played by a terrible young actor, is a selfish, lazy, and a coward who is ungrateful for the things he has and does not work hard for what he want. I don't like that the producers doesn't make them improve as the story progresses, but promotes these terrible characteristics as if they were funny (which they aren't). It's not very homely as it feels like each of theses characters would rather be anywhere but home.

The best episodes in my opinion are those that take place in the company. I like the office dynamics between the employees with the rather strange, power battle of the bosses children. I quite like David's obliviousness to the work environment. I wish there were more episodes focusing on the minor employees as well, like Gary, Rebecca, the Yeung Yeung, the security guard, the cafe waiter ect. I liked the KC-Helen relationship at first, since it was refreshing, but later it got our of hand. The producers should just let them be together already and stop with the stupid obstacles.

The worst characters, other than the father and first daughter, is the grandson's friend, who is not only a perv, but a stalker, commits sexual assault, yet the producers are trying to make him likeable with he whole "I'm poor and work multiple part-time jobs to support my family" - which is not an excuse for sexual assault. Somehow the show tries to make sexual assault okay if you're lonely.

I like the old instrumental theme song better than the horrible new Jaqueline one. Bad singing with boring music which doesn't sound anything different from other TVB song.

Overall, there are some good, and some bad episodes. It's a sitcom of only 23 minutes per episode so it's okay to watch say, if you're having dinner, or in the background.

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