REVIEW: Mad Fate (2023)
A Hong Kong thriller from the mind of Soi Cheang? Sign me up!
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Usually when Soi Cheang and Gordon Lam work together, we get awesome results like the brilliant 2021 thriller Limbo. So, this movie has a lot to live up to.
PLOT
This movie is an interesting tale of a handful of intertwined characters. While hoping to stop the murder of his client, a fortune teller arrives at her apartment too late. Also at the apartment is a delivery boy who is experiencing a strange rush of excitement at the sight of the dead body.
The killer has escaped to the delivery boy’s parents noodle shop, where he hides the tools he used to kill the woman, while a police detective who is determined to find the killer, realises that he has a long history with the delivery boy too.
Sensing that fate will not be kind to him, the fortune teller decides to help the delivery boy change his future, but it tests his fragile sanity.
TALKING POINTS
I worried that I didn’t full understand this film, which means maybe I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have, but make no mistake this is a good film, and something very different.
This movie seems to be tackling the stigma of undiagnosed mental illness, as well as the lack of rehabilitation of youth offenders. It also seems to be having a commentary on the fortune telling culture, but part of me is not sure if its ridiculing or celebrating it.
I’m also on the fence with Gordon Lam’s performance. Part of it is really awesome and well done, and then other times I feel like it’s ridiculous, like at the end where he is acting out the split personality – it’s left me confused. Lokman Yeung as the delivery boy was really good though – he keeps up his menacing look all the way through the film but adjusts it during scenes where he needs to be quick thinking to get out of a scenario. He genuinely comes across as a psycho!
The whole movie is quite good. You don’t really know where its going to take you, which makes it a good thriller, and some of the secondary characters like the police officer and the gambling addicted prostitute are great.
But the movie falters visually – and really badly too. If you are sensitive to poor CGI, then his movie will have to reaching for the button to turn it off. The cat looks truly awful – and if that’s a deliberate design choice then you have to wonder what the hell they were thinking about. But it’s not just the cat – the compositing at the start of the graves against the mountains look bad, as does all shots of the wild weather in the sky. Louis Koo’s One Cool Pictures did the effects, but clearly, they had the D team on.
Another thing that left me baffled was the strange choice of music, with frequent renditions of now public domain classical tunes. The music also made me feel that the movie didn’t want me to take it seriously.
What are my overall thoughts?
In the end I am baffled with what to do with this. It’s not a bad film, but it’s not the awesomeness of something like Limbo. Maybe 3.5 stars – the plot is great, the story is enjoyable, and the performances are mostly solid, but it’s let down with the worst CGI you’ve seen in a long time, strange music choices and the odd dip into comedy that left me very confused.
Help me make sense of this please.
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Genre Mystery Thriller
Director Soi Cheang
Starring Gordon Lam, Lokman Yeung
Original Title 命案
Country of Origin Hong Kong
Release Date 20 April 2023