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Cast:
Ekin
Cheng
Louis
Koo
Shu
Qi
Kristy
Yang
Daniel
Chan
Mark
Cheng
Action:
Lee
Tat Chiu
Producer:
Manfred
Wong
Director:
Raymond
Yip
Score:
 
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FOR
BAD BOYS ONLY
AKA:
N/A
Year:
2000 Reviewer: Andrew
Saroch
At
the end of the year 2000 there were a number of films vying
for the box-office dollars of the Hong Kong public. Among them
were 'Gen-Y
Cops', 'China
Strike Force', 'A
Fighter's Blues' and this star-studded offering from
director Raymond Yip. The film follows the misadventures of
'The Bad Boy Squad' - a detective agency who specialise in
finding lost loves. The agency is staffed by a trio of hip
poseurs: King Chan (Ekin Cheng) is the Casanova of the team as
he divides time between cases and the more important task of
the endless amount of women he meets; Jack Sham (Koo) is the
more brooding member of the team and his own goal is to find
that elusive 'perfect' woman he's always searched for;
completing the gang is King's sister Queen (Yang), a
hippychick helper who has a secret love for Jack.
The
Bad Boy Squad are asked by a young artist (Chan) to find his
lost love Shadow (Qi - in one of her numerous roles in this
film) who seemingly disappeared from the hair salon she worked
in. This straight-forward case soon becomes more and more
intriguing for the trio as they are then asked to find a once
famous Asian athlete who looks exactly like Shadow. Another
twist comes when King meets and subsequently saves an unusual
young woman called Eleven who again looks like the missing
Shadow. King also begins to wonder why the beautiful Eleven
has the apparent mental age of a child as she questions the
simplest and most basic things he asks. All is revealed when a
scarred Shadow finally appears from her time in hiding and
tells the Bad Boy Squad what really happened to her.
'For
Bad Boys Only' starts - in a beguiling way - as a combination
of 'Tokyo
Raiders' and 'City
Hunter' with bright and breezy locations and flashy
camerawork dominating the opening 15 minutes. However, this
encouraging start soon runs out of steam and the productions
true colours are finally shown when the convoluted plot kicks
in. This confusing storyline could have worked if the film had
the pace and vibrancy that the trailer seemed to imply;
instead, the audience must sit through endless uninvolving
romances between the equally uninvolving characters. When the
film does get bogged down in these romantic scenes, the deficiency
of the characters is well highlighted. Ekin Cheng's King is
tiresome in his constant betrayal of the women he meets and is
certainly not as charming as he would like to think. Louis Koo,
who has proved that he is capable of strong performances in
films like 'The
Suspect', is merely asked to smoke his own bodyweight in
cigarettes and look mournful, the latter growing increasingly
annoying as the film goes on. Kristy Yang adds little to her
uninteresting character, but she is not helped by a poodle
haircut that may have been done for a bet. Romantic sub-plots
are not impossible to pull off with style, but the audience
must care about the characters and be able to identify with
them; For Bad Boys Only fails in all of these areas. When the
action does come along it merely adds to the disappointment
with director Raymond Yip obscuring it with his self-indulgent
camera-work - something that Hong Kong cinema was beginning to
grow out of. The film though has some good special effects and
does retain a certain entertainment value, but it stands as a
masterclass in the way a director's lack of self-control can
hinder a film's progress.
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