Movie	Extras
Audio	Video

Firstly, I’ll point out that this is the region 1 Columbia-Tristar version of the movie.  There’s also a Hong Kong version with DTS, but that version isn’t anamorphic, and besides, I can’t listen to DTS sound, and this version is the only one I have access to.

Movie
This movie is insanely fun to watch.  It’s ultra-stylish, especially during the fight scenes.  It combines comedy, action and some drama so well that it you can’t help yourself – you have to like it.  How can I describe the plot?  It’s about a girl trying to find her fiancé, who left her at the altar.  It gets a lot more complicated than that.  The thing is that the writers probably knew what they were writing and they made it complex for fun.  They probably said ‘what the hell, let’s to insane here, it’ll fun to watch’.  It is!

Tony Leung (Leung Chi-Wai, if you want his exact name) and Ekin Cheng are just a joy to watch together.  They’re the two heroes in the movie and they know it.  They always try to one-up each other to impress the girl.  Those two seemed to have so much fun together.  Their chemistry is better than that of a lot of other stars.  (Imagine the fun Mel Gibson and Danny Glover must have had while shooting the ‘Lethal Weapon’ series.)  From the making-of on the DVD, you learn that they did all their own stunts, which is crazy after you look at some of the stunts in the movie.  Tony Leung, for example, jumped from a moving semi-truck (well, one of those big-rigs that carries all the cars) into a moving car.  You watch ‘In the Mood for Love’ and then you watch this, and wonder what goes through his mind when he's choosing roles.  Those two roles are pretty much polar opposites.  He must have wanted something different.  I guess I’ll mention the rest of the actors.  They all did a great job, bringing their own ideas to the characters and making them more distinct and interesting they might have been.

The action scenes are hip and so fun to watch.  They have this incredible life and energy to them.  Director Jingle Ma has an incredible visual style.  The guy is at least 50 years old, which surprised me a whole lot.  After seeing the movie, I was sure the director was young, just because of its style and energy.  It’s incredible when you can say that two people who are not martial artists look good when they fight.  That’s due to Jingle Ma’s terrific editing and style.

The music just adds to the fun. Peter Kam, for those who care, also scored ‘The Accidental Spy’ (here), ‘Throw Down’ (here) and ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ (not here) among others, but this is by far the best one.  It’s really a big shame that there’s no soundtrack for this flick.  The music has this great beat, and has a big latin influence.  It’s just full of energy, and very easy to get into.  The film editing and the music match perfectly, so that when to watch the movie, it seems like you couldn’t possible imagine either one of them without the other.  It seems they were made for each other.

If I which movie most deserves a sequel, it’s this one.  I would just love to see Tony Leung (here, here) and Ekin Cheng (here, here, here) fool around again, cracking jokes at each other and trying to out-machismo the other.  This movie is a whole lot of fun to watch.  The energy it shows is rare in most movies.  It’s one of those movies that you just know it was a blast to shoot because you can see it on screen.  I’m just extremely glad that Columbia-Tristar decided to release this movie here.  My hats off to them once more (even though the dubbed dialogue really sucks, if you choose to watch it without subtitles).

Making-Of
It only lasts about 20 minutes, but it’s still fun enough.  It’s like a promo thing, but it keeps the style of the movie, which makes it much more enjoyable than it probably should have been.  The stars give their impressions of their characters and their thoughts on the movie.  Actors also give their opinions on other actors.  Apparently the Japanese actors (including Toru Nakamura, who is in ‘2009: Lost Memories’) took their roles seriously while the Chinese actors (Tony Leung and Ekin Cheng) fooled around on set.  The stars also talk about the stunts they had to do.  It’s king of fluffy, but it’s enjoyable.

Audio
(Changed on 13/11/2003 because I saw the movie in 5.1)  Bottom line is the rear speakers aren’t used enough.  The sound is good, though.  The dialogue is always heard, and the wonderful score comes out very nicely.  That’s the only time the rear speakers are used to any real effect.  Changing gears, the dubbed version of the movie is very stupid.  The people who dubbed the movie decided to try to match English words to the movement of the actors’ mouths, so at times the dialogue there is just incredibly off-topic.  Luckily, there’s also a subtitle track (Dimension should take a few pointers from these guys), which I’m guessing is much truer to what was actually said.  The dialogue mostly stays in the centre speaker.  The front speakers get some nice surround effects and the back speakers sometimes get some okay effects, like cars going from front to back or back to front.  Other than that, the sound is concentrated on the front.  The rear speakers are used, don’t get me wrong, it’s just for a movie this dynamic and with such energy, I was expecting a more intelligent use of all the speakers.  The subwoofer gets a few explosions tossed its way which it handles well, also.

Video
1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.  The picture is good enough.  There’s dust here and there throughout the movie, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.  Here and there, also, some grain can be seen, especially during the slo-mo shots.  The colours are nice and vibrant, though, which makes for a nice overall picture.

put up sometime in November 2002