Sparrow

A Johnny To production - one of the best movie director/producer from Hong Kong. Thus before the movie Sparrow (watch the trailer here.) actually ended, I was very much confident that something good would eventually come out of it.

The film started by introducing Simon Yam, sewing his own pants (or something like that, couldn't tell whether he was sewing a button on his pants or actually sewing his pants), with a very cheerful-sounding music playing in the background. It simply sounded weird cause I expected a typical Hong Kong style good-guys-versus-bad-guys-chase. But the cheerful soundtrack and a happy Simon Yam just don't fit in.

Things finally gotten serious when the film moved on to Simon and his fellow colleagues' daily routine - having breakfast together and then "hoi gong" (start work)... picking-pockets. Up until this point the story plot is still understandable. But for the next 30 minutes or so, the director gave a very out-of-the-ordinary introduction to Kelly Lin, one of the main characters. Kelly crossed paths with the 4 pick-pockets (sparrows) intentionally, trying to... seduce them (seemed to me), maybe. This could be the longest 30 minutes of my life. The slow-motion and unexplainable scenes could definitely bore you to tears. Halfway through the movie, the true purpose of her encounters with them finally revealed, though Zi Lin already could guessed at the beginning and told me before this already.

I have to agree with Zi Lin that the storyline was too simple, without unexpected twists. And the action sequence, to my surprise, was very limited. I believe that the story itself is quite fresh, it just needs some spices, a little bit of furnishing here and there, and LESS artistic/slow-motion scenes (the slow motion parts are very much like Johnny To's style though). I think that it has a lot of space for improvement, and I mean A LOT.

I watched this movie with ShinYin. She had some very interesting comments on this movie too.