- A martial arts actor stars in a Valentine’s Day film. What next, aliens invading only the US?
- It’s best we become like the amnesiac damsel in distress in this film and quickly forget about it
MARTIAL arts star Donnie
Yen (Ip Man) is known for breaking opponents with his ruthless display of kung fu.
In Cantonese romantic comedy Together, Yen plays a motorcycle cop who displays his ruthless inability to act, and to get around that problem, the film conjures up an excuse that his character can’t smile because of a facial nerve problem.
Viewers who see his unsmiling character for the first time will be speechless, and won’t be able to smile for the rest of the film.
Yen’s smoldering looks will be kept under wraps, and covered up by sunglasses, for this film. It’s true that action stars talk more with their hands than their faces, and Yen is no exception to that rule.
Donnie Yen should give Michelle Chen a summons for wasting our time.
But his unsmiling character is the least of our problems. Hong Kong director Clarence Fok saddles Yen’s Officer Cool (yes, that’s actually his name) with an amnesiac damsel in distress, Jojo (Taiwan’s Michelle Chen), who had met with a car accident during a wedding photo shoot with her fiance two years ago.
She can’t remember the past, and after meeting Officer Cool, who has a girlfriend whom he had reluctantly promised to marry, her selective amnesia appears more prominently in the film.
This is supposed to create tension among viewers as to whether she remembers Cool.
She also has a penchant for driving her sports car at breathtaking speeds through Hong Kong’s narrow roads. How is it that she remembers how to drive?
There’s no reason why Cool and Jojo should fall for each other, except that the film dictates this requirement. I doubt if these two people would have had an interest in each other if they had met in normal circumstances.
The director doesn’t want viewers to forget that they’re watching a romantic film, so he uses sappy instrumental and vocal love songs during Cool’s dalliances with Jojo and also in the second intertwining segment.
Angelababy and Kai Ko Chen-Tung can kiss their luck goodbye.
With Yen’s scenes, you can understand why the director felt he needed soaring violin and piano tunes to accompany them.
The second part involves a Gucci-loving woman (Hong Kong’s Angelababy), who has to eat simple meals because she splurges on branded items, and a police wire tapper (Taiwan’s Kai Ko Chen-Tung), who likes to cook pork chops at home.
They meet cute through a phone app device and they decide that they need seven days of romance to get to know each other.
I don’t need to tell viewers that they will fall for each other during this seven days but complications will arise that will test their relationship. The fact that he’s a wire tapper should ring alarm bells in astute viewers about what he will do next during his work. It’s also strange that he doesn’t find out about her work during their courtship.
The film creates an unnecessary and lame obstacle for the wire tapper by showing Angelababy’s boss (Hong Kong’s Bosco Wong) driving her home in his sports car. This is supposed to make the wire tapper jealous. Viewers, like me, will give a big sigh of embarrassment watching this scene.
Viewers are taken on a merry-go-round of romantic cliches in ‘Together’
Together is like a square peg (Yen) forced into a hole (romantic film) with the resulting tedious outlook. I yawned a few times during the film and it really tested my patience with its corny plot and bad acting.
1 1/2 out of 5
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