Review of The Silent War (2012) by K L — 06 Aug 2012

It's a strange thing to say but some directors just don't get better, and I say this not in the strictly artistic sense but in a much more personal sense. A film director sees a mistake in his film, and corrects it, just as a cook would vary his ingredients according to his every last tasting.

Not that every film should be better than the last - making film is after all not like making dvd players - but the obvious mistakes, the cheap effects, the cheesy slow-motion turn of the head, the male and female leads' departure scenes that look like AXE commercials, what are they doing again and again and again in Alan Mak's films? Just how many more movies does he have to make to realize that they're simply bunch of worthless gimmicks, and that he is not Wong Kar-Wai even if he uses Wong's shots and music.

The ending scene was an attempt at recreating the complex juxtaposition at the end of the first Godfather film. But while the irony in the Godfather is that Coleone's soldiers kill the heads of the New York mafia families, he is in the church swearing to God to renounce Satan.

What is it doing in this film? Nothing. Just for the hell of it. Well, that's fine too, if you do it well. And they blew it.