In the gala premiere of Black and White: The Dawn of Justice (痞子英雄：黎明再起), we were graced with the presence of Mark Chao and Director Tsai Yueh-hsun.
From the trailers and past knowledge of 痞子英雄, we expected a lot of action and fight scenes in the movie. This, it certainly didn’t fail to deliver. We could see the effort put into the fight scenes and there were a lot of them but there was perhaps an overemphasis on it.
The plot was fairly straight forward with a few small twists along the way. They didn’t make us go ‘WOW, it was unexpected’ but it definitely spiced up the storyline a little.
As usual plots go, the terrorist forces got their hands on some powerful device that threatens to kill people in a city and the government of that country has to decide on how to deal with the situation. Mostly about whether they should sacrifice that city for the greater good. The hero(es) of the day decide to take things into their own hands and save the city.
The comical interactions between Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zhen was one of the highlights of the movie. Watch out for their hand gestures and the way they respond to each other. If you haven’t watched the drama or the previous part of the movie, the two partners are modelled such that one is intelligent and the other, good at fighting.
I guess what appealed to the audience, us, was that we identify with the moral dilemma faced by the hero. To sacrifice a few people for the sake of a greater good? Would we? What is justice? Just because a particular someone is wanted by the police, he is bad and should be condemned?
If there were some small details I observed about the movie, it was the music that accompanied the presence of the villain. It was always that same sinister music that made me chuckle.
Also, while I may not be an actor, I could relate to how difficult it was for certain emotions to be expressed, in particular the scenes where Mark grieved. Thumbs up for the good acting!
Other details that could be for the sake of humour are the names of some characters. In the police force there’s a tech savvy nerd looking guy by the name of Hulk. Noticed it’s somewhat strange how he got that nickname and his female police colleague who’s named 小绿 of all names.
With that said, thank you Clover Films for the invitation to the gala premiere and to all those who like action packed movies, catch this movie in cinemas on 9th October!
Writer: Samuel Low