What a messy drama

This drama’s only saving grace is Pakho Chau. The handsome owner of a cafe who is charismatic and friendly and awesome. Even when he goes into his vigilante mode as the Sage Killer to kill what he sees as bad people or “bad bugs”, I kinda found myself rooting for him. He already made the drama a 8/10, but then oh boy… the problems mount up like wtf.

The female lead is played by Venus Wong and her story is pretty sad, but I find her heighten senses and how she controlled them a little unbelievable. To dampen her powers she eats a ton of sweets, and to awaken them she drinks a lemon and salted water concoction. How in earth can she do this for years without suffering from diabetes or high blood pressure is beyond me, but the most ridiculous part is how - with her powers - she can walk into a room where a crime had happened and *feel* what happened there with the residual emotions left behind. She can get into the role of the victim or the perpetrator and deduce the perpetrator with said emotions. I kept on thinking: come on yo, if we wanted a superhero drama we would watch one, what is this? And of course, to force the tension, TVB had her paired with vigilante Pakho so he was constantly having to do this “hide emotions” thing or else she would sense his “evil” side and expose him. A predictable move and I saw it coming a mile away. The only other interesting characters for me was Jinny Ng as this really manipulative and vindictive bitch of a woman who tried to play with the people around her to see how far she could push people to do her bidding, and Mark Ma as this misunderstood working class loudmouth who actually had a heart of gold and was almost a victim of Pakho.

The writing I found was quite messy and the stories do not meld together well enough to form a cohesive whole. It just feels like lumps of stories thrown together at a wall and the screenwriters were hoping the main actors would keep the whole thing together, but it just doesn’t really work.

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Disappointing

As this was a Youku joint production with TVB, I knew to expect the typical Youku grim-dark grey sombre tone they love to slather all over their dramas, and yes, it's here. As soon as episode 1 started, it was just full of pure grim-dark seedy Hong Kong undertones.

I don't hate this drama at all, don't get me wrong. It has Moses Chan as a terminal cancer sufferer who was locked up for drug dealing, and after over a decade in prison,wants to spend his last remaining time alive dealing even more drugs. Then we have Nancy Wu being this strange shades-of-grey character that has us guessing if she is helping Moses or not. Then we have the police officer played by Edwin Siu, who has mild brain damage so is unable to feel emotions properly, which really frustrates his ex-girlfriend played by Kelly Cheung, who still has feelings for him. It is all great acting and I enjoyed it a lot. What ruins the entire drama is Matthew Ho's character and how some of the writing just makes no darn sense.

Oh yeah, there will be spoilers, so just warning you.

Matthew Ho plays this mute food delivery guy that communicates using Hong Kong sign language. This was great, I thought, because we wouldn't have to hear Matthew speaking, because I do find his acting rather terrible. He always plays the same role of "oblivious idiot is oblivious", but they added voiceovers spoken by him to let us know what he is saying anyway. That's pretty normal for mute characters on TVB though, so that is not my complaint. My complaint is that it seems every single person, for reasons unknown, cares a lot about him a lot for NO REASON. It makes no sense why they all care about him so much as there were no events that had Matthew do stuff to make them indebted to him. Instead, they just somehow slowly grew protective of him over the course of the drama, and I kept wondering if I had missed any episodes where these people owed him... but no!

For example, Rosita Kwok's character grew up with him so her caring about him I understand, but later we see the reporter Bowie Cheung suddenly caring a lot about him. Why? And then we had Moses Chan's Man Wah who meets him once after Nancy Wu introduced them, and then suddenly - out of the blue - Moses claims he treats Matthew like family and wants to give him all this stuff to help him. Why did that happen and when? And everybody learns sign language in record time to be able to read his hand signs.

And the thing that broke the character for me was when his kid sister was kidnapped and is later accidentally killed due to a plan gone wrong. The cause is related to Moses and yet somehow Matthew - who knew Moses was involved - is completely okay with the guy and even speaks to him soon after while calling him a friend. Dude... your sister died because of that man, what is wrong with you?

One great thing about the drama though is the great main theme song. Dang, that is one cool canto metal track, but it can't make me put the score higher than a 6 out of 10 overall. Matthew Ho ruins it.

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A great drama!

Yes it has all the typical forced and contrived relationship nonsense in there but man I really liked this drama. I loved the odd combination of Rosina Lam and Kalok Chow, but it works. I also loved David Chiang turning up in his Al Cappuccino role for a a few minutes and then immediately putting him into the dad role, that was unexpected but quite lighthearted fun.

The pets they used were really well trained. In the entertainment business it is said that there are two things you should try to avoid giving dialogue if possible, very young children and animals, and yet here the animals were great especially the golden retriever. But what I found really weird was how all the animals could understand each other, a dog could chat to a cat and parrot, and yet cannot understand human speech. If we as humans cannot understand foreign languages then how do animals of different species understand each other? The Chinese do have the saying “duck and chicken talking” meaning they speak but so not understand each other, so I found it really weird. The dubbing is also weird as the animals do not move their mouths, almost as if it was telepathy.

The thing that made me laugh the most was how the golden retriever was said to have the mental acuity of a child, maybe 5 years old, but somehow in its dubbed dialogue it can throw out profound and complex poetry, and yet on the other hand doesn’t know what a flip phone is. This just adds to the ridiculousness of the entire show and it was hilarious.

I recommend this show purely for the silliness or if it all, and the show knows it is silly and embraces it.

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A law drama I actually like? What?

I am not usually a fan of law dramas, there is usually too much legalese and stuff in them that get really boring no matter who acts in it because it can sometimes feel like it is shoving law knowledge at the viewer without their consent, but this drama is completely different. Instead, the focus is on the human relations and the important ties each person has, which effects the decisions made in a court of law. It does not overuse the court scenes and puts in just enough to make each case entertaining to watch as the lawyers battle it out, with Kenneth Ma handing over yellow notes to help push his side to winning the case.

Once again, Kenneth Ma is outstanding here as a highly talented legal executive who approaches his cases in unconventional ways but within the bounds of the law, and coming up with solutions to difficult situations. I really loved watching him act here, making it his 2nd great TV drama this year right after The Invisibles.

Kenneth has a group of 3 other friends he hangs around with, played by Rosina Lam, Jonathan Cheung and Stephen Wong. These guys have been through so much together since their days at law school and we get to see their camaraderie feel like a really real thing as the drama progresses. Who really stood out here was Stephen Wong as I was so tired of seeing him act as the boring, serious, sour-face guy in most of the dramas I see him in. Name one drama where he has been outgoing, obnoxious and friendly, and I can promise you nothing would come to mind until this drama came out. Seeing him as this smiling, laughing, hugely annoying yet endearing guy was a welcome role change for the guy, and he does a great job portraying a massively talented lawyer.

Even Jonathan Cheung has his moments here as well. He is the very sensible and very well-behaved prude of the group but instead of coming off as annoying and boring, he was actually quite entertaining to watch, especially the awkward exchanges between him and his love interest, a strict judge played by Joman Chiang. Watching Joman go from stern judge to being a little bit girly from her interactions with Jonathan was great, but their love story takes seconds place compared to Kenneth and Rosina's.

The romantic tension between Kenneth and Rosina was the best in the drama. They both clearly are attracted to each other but the timing has always been off with Kenneth constantly finding obstacles between him getting with the girl of his dreams. He even decided that deep down it was God telling him that they could not be together so he resigned himself to that fate. But as per many TVB dramas, they do eventually end up together and the build up to it was fantastic as it led to one very touching moment when they finally embraced. The only weird thing about their relationship while they were together was that they never kissed onscreen,. Did their spouses send them a "no kissing allowed" ultimatum? One thing that I do have to call out is Rosina daydreaming about Raymond Lam, who is Rosina's cousin is real life, so it came off as a little creepy and weird.

Overall a great drama to watch and I highly recommend it. It even has a really catchy main theme song that sticks in your head long after each episode is over. The only major thing to ruin it was the repeated overplaying of the great song "Friends For Life" by Ekin Cheng. It is so overused while watching this that I have grown to really hate the song and have to skip it whenever it comes up on my personal music playlist. A great song ruined by overzealous use in this drama.

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What happened?

Part 1 had its problems and was not bad as it had a real gripping ending, but part 2… what were the writers thinking?

I don't know how important CSAT exams are, but this exam is one of the driving plot points of part 2. What makes no sense is that humanity faces extinction and yet all these kid could think about was getting into college. I am sure there are more important things to worry about than college entry at a time like that. This becomes such a central plot point that one of the characters literally goes insane after finding out the 2023 CSAT exams were cancelled and were to be held in 2024. This leads to the drama ending not to a final showdown against the alien threat, but the final boss being this kid who has gone insane and had somehow activated god-mode in his final rampage.

The ending was anti-climatic and skips ahead to 2024 where humanity has wiped out 99% of the menace so had the threat under control. Okay... so we are supposed to imagine the final desperate struggle and not be shown it? Instead we were given teenaged angst drama with automatic rifles? Sure.

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I won't rewatch this

Jessica Hsuan and Frankie Lam are great in this series. The history of their characters stories is really quite traumatic if I am honest, and Frankie always being the thoughtful mature guy to the really insecure Jessica really grated on my nerves but it all ended ok. However, I refuse to watch it again. Why? One word. Cherry. F*** Cherry. Natalie Tong really made the character this hateful witch I just wanted to strangle, and that ladt scene with poor Vincent... nope. Unforgivable! How was that character written that way ans allowed to win awards? The awards were rigged!

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Great drama, terrible main theme song

I love this drama, always puts a smile on my face.
It’s a shame Linda Chung cannot sing.
It has a fantastic cast and great story that is just fun and gripping from beginning to end.
But Linda Chung really cannot sing.
Bobby Au Yeung is fantastic to watch and Joey Meng is darn beautiful in her role, it just blows my mind.
And yet Linda Chung just really cannot sing at all.
Overall a great drama to watch and great to rewatch, just remember to skip the intro and ending credits because the singing is terrible.
Did I mention Linda Chung cannot sing?
Seriously, who thought she could sing and allowed her to sing so many songs at TVB? She has this low hoarse voice that makes songs sound like they are being wrung out of her throat instead of being sung, and yet somebody at TVB thought “yes, she can sing, make her sing!”
Other than that small black mark, great show! Just stop Linda singing, for the love of God.

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This is a pretty good show but one thing ruins it for me

I’ll admit, I loved the first Big White Duel season, so I was hoping for more awesomeness in this. I suspended my disbelief for some of the miraculous surgeries carried out in this drama by the amazing cast, and I can ignore some of the small plotholes it presents, but one thing I could mot forgive is Natalie Tong. Why does she nearly always play a dumb character in these dramas? I really, really hated her character Cherry in My Unfair Lady and how she treated Vincent Wong I wanted to throw my teacup at my TV, and here she does it again by being an unbelievable idiot that it blows my mind. In the drama it shows she made some past decisions that were extremely childish and selfish, and in the present day while dating Kenneth Ma’s character Dr. Tong Ming, she again makes stupid decisions that lead to her misfortune - her own fault - and she decides to just be friends with Tong Ming. Like wtf? This show should he an 8 or 9, but her character pulls it down to a 7.

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Anthology of 3 short movies, 2 of which disappoint

This movie is an anthology of 3 short movies. The first is called The Chink that talks about a pop star who moves into a new apartment as a secret love nest for her and her boyfriend slash manager. The second is called In The Mall following a KOL live streaming while walking around. The third and last movie is called The Tenement dealing with a rain soaked mysterious woman blocking the way for the residents of an apartment block.

The first two short movies are terrible and boring af, I did not care what was happening to the characters because they were all huge a**holes and deserved what they got. This is a shame because the second movie had Jerry Lamb in it, and I do enjoy watching him act but he was so unlikeable here.

Now, the last movie is the best of the bunch as it has a group of apartment block strangers working together to deal with this strange wet figure blocking the stairway that seems to be kill anybody trying to leave the block. This movie had Richie Ren in it and it was so great to see him in a cantonese acting role doing his best to speak canto, and most of the funny and scariest moments were here as well, but sadly the ending was too abrupt due to the time constraints of the anthology.

The first two movies were so bad that I cannot rate them because it would just be a zero, but the 3rd short movie on its own pulls this up to a 6. If the third movie was able to become its own feature, this score could have been higher, but the bad aftertaste of the first 2 dragged it down.

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What drugs were they taking to make this?

Man, as I have seen the previous Flying Tiger I knew what to expect from this formulaic series, but I was not prepared for the new depths of suspended disbelief I had to sit through. Many big TVB names are here like Kenneth Ma and Michael Miu, and my favourite wonky canto actor Michael Wong was in it as well speaking in his unique way, but this is all ruined by the inclusion of Lee Pace. Don't mistaken me, Lee is a great actor and has done amazing stuff, but h is completely wasted here in this series. Some scenes with him had me go "what the fish?" because it made no sense, like throwing a can of... I think shaving cream... into a microwave, which destroys a house. That had me laughing so hard! And when Lee Pace's character sees his parents die, the shots to show how sad he was was done so poorly I had to shake my head, and I never do that, and he gets over his parents death so quickly I got massive whiplash. Also, talking about his parents, the terrorists of the drama held his parents hostage so that Lee's character would comply to their demands, but before Lee could carry out any instructions the terrorists kill them anyway, losing any leverage they had on him, and yet he continued to follow their instructions. What sort of writing is that? Man, there is suspension of disbelief, but here you need to be suspended by a cliff to follow this properly.

On the bright side, great soundtrack.

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Not as good as part 1, but still a fun movie to watch

Ah it is great to see another movie with Janice Man in it being all pretty while also authoritative, loved seeing her back in this movie. What lowered the score of part 2 for me was that it missed Donnie Yen, and that was a crying shame due to how awesome he was in part 1. What also brought down the score was how rushed everything felt in part 2 as well. They should have made it into a trilogy to better pace the story of each arc. However, this is offset but the fact that the canto voice actor for Zhou Zhi Ruo finally stopped sucking on helium and actually adds depth to her voice acting thanks to the evil turn of the character. That was a massive relief for me as I watched this flick.

The final boss of this movie is Cheng Kun, which made sense if you followed the both parts and watched how he sneakily manipulated his way to power, but man the fight at the end could have been done a little better. There is more CG this time around as well, which appeared a little off at times but never to the point where it distracted too much from the main story. A good movie and rewatchable.

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I loved this movie

I watched this in Cantonese because if I was gonna enjoy this movie, it was going to be in Canto! Comparisons to the original Jet Li movie is unavoidable, but this movie is - in my opinion - entertaining af. Seeing Louis Koo in ancient chinese outfits was a great throwback to his TVB days, and Donnie Yen as the awesome Zhang San Feng was great as well as we rarely see Donnie as an old and invincible martial artist. I don't know why people are complaining about Raymond Lam being too old for the role, the film makes it very clear his character is in his thirties, and Raymond easily passes for someone in his thirties. Sure it does't follow the books 100%, but this is a movie and not a TV drama, therefore some liberties had to be taken.

Although I had fun watching this film, what annoyed me the most was the canto voice actor for Zhou Zhi Ruo. Hot dang, was she sucking on helium or something, I really hated the voice acting on her. On the opposite end, I was enamored by the actress Janice Man as Zhao Min, she is a fierce looking beauty that had me enjoying the scenes she had as she shared them with Raymond Lam. Her voice actor also did a great job as well, providing authority in her voice.

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What a pile of crap

The only redeeming feature of this movie is Philip Keung in the third story, but even then the story is really weak and the only scary thing was the terrible script Philip was given to work with. He did his best but it was as immersive as a dirty toilet bowl.

The first story involved two friends, one who wanted to be a screenwriter and one who wanted to be a director. They go to a special props shed with many preserved animals, where the scriptwriter writes this amazing serial murder script and wants to be the director of the movie. The aspiring director gets upset at this and claims the screenwriter was being selfish, there is a scuffle, and the screenwriter predictably dies. Aspiring director guy panics and, predictably, he put the screenwriter’s body into a suitcase and pours formaldehyde all over him to preserve the body. The director guy later is able to make the movie using his friends script but then oh no, the cops ask him questions about his missing screenwriter buddy. He claims he hasn’t seen his friend in months and realises the cops are gonna find the location where he killed his friend so decides to go back to burn the place down. This is when - somehow - he discovers his screenwriter buddy had murdered 3 people in different ways as inspiration for his script and had the bodies hidden around the prop shed, which he somehow also discovers. Plot twist, the screenwriter wanted to be the director because he knew it would be the first and last film he would make as he would be arrested soon after it. Oh no, I don’t care.

The story was boring and the deaths were all so crap and had no stakes at all so I didn’t care what happened to anybody. I didn’t even care about the two male leads because they were so unlikeable as well. My biggest issue with this story is that a few months have passed already since all the murders, but when the director guy finds the bodies they are all still fresh and not rotting at all. Do you think corpses stay fresh for months and not rot when stored in the Hong Kong heat? I don’t care how much cling film you use and formaldehyde you use, no body can look that fresh for that long. Also, won’t some dude who doesn’t work as an undertaker be refused purchasing of large quantities of formaldehyde? I am sure you need a lot for 4 cadavers. And also that suitcase where the screenwriter was thrown into must have been made using some legendary material because it was clearly a cloth-like material suitcase and yet none of the formaldehyde leaked out, not even through the zipper gaps. They should have gotten a suitcase sponsorship to promote how great the waterproofing was inside and outside.

The 2nd movie was a slightly better story about 2 girls as aspiring screenwriters (see a trend here?) and the younger girl copying some of the ideas of the older girl to write a great screenplay. The older girl was slightly upset about it, but ultimately let it go. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the younger girl goes missing and the older girl starts seeing the younger girl and thinks she’s a ghost. Oh no! We find out later the younger girl got into a taxi and the taxi driver murdered her because… I dunno. The older girl was hypnotised to try and bring back any useful information about what could have happened to the younger girl. The taxi guy just so happened to work at the same studio as the older girl so he tried to silence her. Suddenly, as the older girl was riding in his taxi and realised the taxi man was likely the murderer, the cops arrive and arrest him. Older girl’s colleague appears and says “yeah I totally suspected him so I called the cops.”

My biggest issue with the 2nd story is that we do not get given any context into why the taxi driver killed the younger girl. We do not truly understand his motivation, the story just goes “oh she died he killed her” and that’s it. We get one scene where taxi man talks to his wife and his wife shouts at him for a variety of things, as if it was trying to imply he was looking for a way to release his pent up anger but it wasn’t enough and I wasn’t convinced. And the “ghost” situations were all in the older girls mind as a result of hypnotism. That was lame.

The third story is the best of the bunch but that’s not saying much, that’s like saying the diahrrea I did today was better than the diahrrea I did yesterday. This is the story that has Philip Keung, who wakes up on a wet floor with temporary amnesia. As he runs around this warehouse he keeps seeing ghostly figures appearing and disappearing around him. Eventually he meets a woman and starts talking to her as if he was very familiar with her but she won’t follow him as he is trying to make her leave with him due to the ghosts that were there. She eventually goes with him and in a room where he saw a ghost there was no ghost there, so she tries to leave and kicks Philip in the balls using a very fake and terribly unconvincing manner. Later we discover Philip was a triad boss and his wife wanted to leave him, so he killed his wife and poured acid all over her body so she wouldn’t leave him, and then be became a vagrant out of guilt. Later some guys drugged him and his friend and took them to a warehouse to conduct illegal experiments as a way to cure this disfigured and ill woman at the behest of some guy. Philip woke up and killed a lot of the people at the warehouse out of anger and passed out due to being injected with something during one of the scuffles. All the ghost stuff and the woman he was talking to were all in his head as he was recovering from the injection. He catches up to the disfigured woman and is about to lill her when all of a sudden someone smacks him at the back of the head and kills him and the story ends.

Story 3 was a confusing mess and what illegal experiments were being conducted to fix what ailment of the woman? Nothing is explained. The story started off pretty good as Philip was dealing with possible supernatural stuff, but it immediately fell in quality the moment the woman - as his hallucinated wife - kicked him between the legs. It was poorly edited and looked incredibly fake that it took me out of the immersion immediately and the rest of the story just fell apart.

Avoid this mess of a movie.

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What the heck is this?

After watching two incredible dramas with Kenneth Ma this year I thought TVB were only going to get better, but instead we get this abomination. Ruco Chan really is unlucky, the first drama with him as lead this year is a pile of manure and that breaks my heart. I really like Ruco and I really want him to be in an awesome, likeable role, but here his acting is just mediocre. It is not his fault as we've all seen him be awesome, but the role he was given is just... meh.

Besides from him, the other main characters are just annoying. Mandy Wong here plays a pretty pitiful role, but her being this huge pushover just had me so angry because her meekness goes from pitiful to just pathetic. Roxanne Tong has a main role as a cop here, but she is so irritating to watch because her acting is awful and she has no chemistry at all with any of the other characters of the show. She just spends the entire time failing as a cop and following Ruco Chan like a leech because of her hunches with little reason to do so. Kenneth Ma needs to show her how its done, man.

One thing that also did not fail to get my blood boiling is Angelina Lo. Every single role I see her in gets me mad because she aways plays the same whiney, moany annoying f'ing old woman that is so unlikeable it makes me want to throw my phone at the TV. She has been typecast into the rich annoying old woman role and I get it, she is really good at it, but whenever I hear her voice or see her on the TV I automatically brace myself for the inevitable wave of anger to crash over me like a tidal wave of diarrhoea.

The best part of the entire drama is Hugo Ng as this massive a'hole father to Mandy Wong's character, who just got out of prison after 30 years. He is allowed to let loose and overact to his heart's content, just eating up every single scene he is in by being the rowdy and unpredictable villain and it is just joyous to watch him in action. If this drama did not have him in it it would not even be worth watching. I am watching this purely for Hugo, more crazy Hugo please!!

EDIT: my goodness, I really want Angelina Lo and Roxanne Tong to just stop acting in this drama already. If they die I will celebrate, damn they are both as annoying as each other.

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The CGI is pretty good but this drama is so full of things that annoyed me.

It started off pretty well and gave us enough exposition to explain the current situation, but suddenly stuff goes sideways and we see how inept and pathetic the Republic of Korea Armed Forces were. They are so undermanned that they had to rope in 3rd year High School students to help fill in the numbers.

Now these kids.... they make some really stupid decisions that had me asking if any group of rational people would make the same decisions they did. And some scenes made no sense, like in one scene they were stuck in a garage and the danger was coming in through the roof but the car keys were stuck behind a cabinet. They made it very clear it would be in any moment and yet found 10 minutes to draw lots to determine who would be bait and lure it away so somebody could try to grab the keys... the same amount of time they could have easily moved the cabinet and grabbed the keys! That is just one of many idiotic moments that had me cursing at my TV.

Best moment is the huge sacrifice at the end. Really emotional and was a great way to end part 1.

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