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Love Undercover

  Country : Hong Kong
Year: 2002
Genre: Comedy / Romantic
Format: DVD
Running Time: 1H43
Distributor: Mei Ah Entertainment
Date reviewed: 10/06/2002
   
Producer: Ivy Kong
Director: Joe Ma

Cast:
Miriam Yeung, Daniel Wu, Iris Wong, Raymond Wong,
Joe Lee, Wyman Wong, Hui Siu-Hung, Ng Chi-Hung, Wilson Yip, Matt Chow

 


Story: A job desk at the Lost Property Department is the only opportunity that L.K. Fong could get after graduating from the Police Academy and god knows how boring that job is. But one day an opportunity strikes her, when the Special Crimes Division chief chooses her for an undercover mission. The mission is very simple, try to sneak a microphone to a dinner table where the Godfather's son, Ah Kuen is making a deal, even a simple recruit can do this, right?

But thing turn out into a complete mess and Ah Kuen is starting to fall for Fong. The chief see this opportunity and decide that Fong should play the game. But with spending time with Ah Kuen, Fong is also stating to have real feeling for the gangster, which is making the situation very complicated as she will have to choose to follow her duty over her feelings.

Review: Since the last few years, Hong Kong production had some poor results at the local box office. But only one genre is still making assured profits and gathering a minimum of attention every time, and that genre, unfortunately for avid action fans, is the romantic comedy. Hong Kong is now producing this genre in mass quantities and has put on the side more risky big box office production. But out of all these movies, there is still some that are worth watching, such as Love Undercover.

The premise of the movie is rather simple; a female undercover cop falls for the suspect she is investigating. But even with a basic storyline like this, the movie still surprises and is able to reach the viewer with a lot of great comical and touching situations. There's also no real slow down in the movie and the progression of the storyline is very easy and fun to follow. The only small problem of the story is the ending, which seemed a little bit rushed and could have been a lot better.

The team behind the movie Dummy Mommy Without a Baby, who had a great result at the box office, is back. Director Joe Ma, who mostly directs romantic comedy, surpassed their last production without a doubt. And with the success of Love Undercover, it's no surprise that a sequel is also being planned. But the real shine of this movie are the actors themselves. Surprisingly there's a lot of characters in the movie and there's not that much time allowed to each of the characters, except for the two main cast members, but the performance of the actors was just enough to make them the highlight of the movie.

With less than ten movies in her background, Miriam Yeung, is now becoming the queen of romantic comedy in HK. Interpreting L.K. Fong, the main character of the movie, it was very apparent that Miriam Yeung was having a blast during the production. She is the kind of actress that brings so much heat and vitality in her play that makes her character a lot more human and loveable. And of course her facial expressions and comical behavior were as funny as usual.

Daniel Wu, who was far from his usual role of bad ass action hero, played the son of the triad kin ping that L.K. Fong was investigating. But even if I prefer him in action movies, Wu is a very versatile actor that is pretty convincing when the time comes to show emotion. I won't hide the fact that I felt a certain pity for him when Fong was playing with his feelings like a yo-yo.

The secondary characters were also very present and play an important part in the movie. The best one is the police chief, played by Hui Siu-Hung. This type of role fits him so well and his over-acting was great and funny.

A good thing for those who don't like romance too much is that the comedy factor is very present all along in the movie. Of course the movie gets a bit more dramatic near the end, which is something to be expected from this kind of production. One thing that is good about the comedy factor is that the type of humor you find in HK production is usually slapstick and easy jokes. In this production, the slapstick humor is of course present but at least it is not over-used and a lot of jokes work very well too, even for the people who are not used to HK humor.

Love Undercover is maybe not the best HK production of the year, but it still gets some recognition at being a success in a genre that is now too common in HK. Korean filmmakers are still the best at making romantic comedy but if HK would put a bit more effort in their scripts, HK romantic comedies could really become as popular as the Korean ones.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD [ NTSC, All Region ] :


Mei Ah was well known by HK movie fans for their crappy DVDs, but for the last couple of month now, Mei Ah DVDs are starting to be amazing and comparable to North American DVDs. The anamorphic widescreen transfer is excellent and the 5.1DD original Cantonese audio track is also of great quality. The only problem of this DVD is the English subs. A lot of sentences are missing the beginning, which is a bit confusing sometimes for non-Cantonese speakers. The movie is still watchable but the viewing would probably be more pleasant with good English subs. The numerous extras consist of: Making of (Chinese subtitles only), deleted scenes, MTV video, Trailer, Extra Trailer: Chinese Odyssey 2002, Running Out of Time 2, Second Time Around and Fat Choi Spirit.

Reviewed by Janick Neveu

This movie was provided courtosy of:


Story Cast Entertainment Subtitles Overall
3 4 4 2.5 3.5


 

 

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