The film goes like this: Julian Cheung is Seven, a cold blooded killer that gets the job done. Failing his mission, he flees to Taiwan to meet a childhood friend, and there he encounters a girl. But he knows that he cannot escape from his unfinished task forever...
Julian Cheung plays a cold blooded killer in his accomplished cool manner and in the process disintegrate a feather between his connections to the audience. While Cheung is undeniably cool, his character lacks an edge and perhaps that little bit of salt that makes Francis Ng such a good actor. Still, Cheung has always been talented and he does perform quite suitably. As for Cheung Tat Ming is incredibly intense and perhaps almost stole the show over Julian in his glorified supporting role. His facial expressions of lost and tension when he brash a guy who just bedded his chick and combining the cutting edge moments of his finger being chopped off creates a moment of Yau's cinema magic. It is these sorts of brutal and cheap scenes that elevate Yau into his favourable genre.
Adding to the mix is a hot Taiwanese chick with the name of Ivy Yi who adds layers into her role and while Yau use of the chick to deliver some sort of message about money making people crazy and how all guys seems to be killed by chicks, is more questionable than believable. Ivy performs one of the sexiest strips tense in HK cinema. While if the scene is handled by Wong Jing, the audience will end up being turned off, Yau handles the scene with a certain professional flair that makes him a par better than most within these genres.
All in all, A Mob Story is by no means original, as just a look at the name of the killer "Seven" sounds more Hollywood than Hong Kong, but it doesn't have to be. Yau have created something worth watching and while the film as a whole may seem tact underdeveloped and the message being a bit outrageous. Ultimately Yau have created a film that is brutal, sexy, gory and real. For that reason alone, it is probably a false excuse to celebrate and in fact its 1:12am right now and Neo is hoping to be able to sign off by 1:13am and so why don't you just give it a shotÂ…
I rate it 8/10
- www.thehkneo.com