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Sean Tierney
演员, 编剧, 音乐家, 喜剧演员, 笔者
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Movie Review: Switch/天機: 富春山居圖

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More like 八婆. Switch it off. Switch it off!!!*****I went with [ name removed for legal reasons] to the Dynasty last night to watch Andy Lau’s latest film.*

It was the right venue, because this film just prison-sexed it’s way into the Top 10 All-Time Worst.

Switch/天機: 富春山居圖 makes me pine for the comparative joy of Speed Angels.

A Chinese painting that has been halved is the target of two rival groups of thieves: the Japanese smuggling group and the British smuggling group.

That’s what they’re called in the movie. Such subtlety and creativity.

Because out of all the nations they could have chosen, those two have the best histories with China.

Oh wait… unless there’s a (mandatory?)subtext going on here…

In case you didn’t get it, one of the British smugglers is shown smoking something in a water pipe. And it appears to have a soothing effect. 

Yes, we get it. Put down the Didactic Hammer (and Sickle). 

An insurance agent

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(who turns out to be one hell of a hand-to-hand combat expert)

and a secret agent,

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“Michael, let me borrow your ride real quick. Watch my hoes, will ya?”

who are married to each other,

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“It makes the breakfast or it watches Flirting Scholar 2 again.”

even as the husband makes no secret about being a serial philanderer (sort of; more later),

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“Let’s killour agents.”

are tasked with recovering one half of the painting and protecting the other half.

I think.

You see, it’s hard to tell exactly, because this film makes no narrative (or cognitive) sense whatsoever.

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Good way to lose an eye.

Which is understandable when you look at who wrote and directed it.

Jay Sun previously produced Fit Lover, a film so awful that it’s emotional climax is two cars having sex.

No, really. I’m not joking.

Well, Switch/天機: 富春山居圖 has a scene in which Andy Lau and Lin Chi-ling don’t have sex.

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“But she wanted to. They all do.”


It just sounds like it, and vaguely looks like it, but it turns out Andy Lau is just doing push ups.

While the woman he thinks looks like his dead ex-girlfriend sits, fully clothed and divested of her disguise (because it reallyis his not-dead-at-all girlfriend) sits on the edge of a bathtub. Alone.

For no f@#$ing reason whatsoever.

Except that this film was made in (and for) China, so no touchy-feely-kissy-pokey.

But reason never seems to figure very large, if indeed at all, in this mess.

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Not that this needs a reason.

Switch/天機: 富春山居圖 is mostly an exercise in cheap Chinese knock-offery, rapidly tossing off (!) imitations of things we’ve all seen done before (and better).

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That’s thethird version of the same pistol in this scene.

You can see all the Hollywood movies and stunts it tries to ape, but it just comes off looking like a made-for-cable  mockbuster

Especially when, in the first five minutes, someone is shown zip-lining to a building.

From a jet.

The CGI is laughable (just like my translations).

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地毯和窗帘的和谐?

But so are the story, the characters, and the cinematography.

Switch/天機: 富春山居圖 is insultingly bad, implicitly jingoistic, and indefensibly awful. 

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布尔卡.布尔卡。

Here’s something I’m not sure whether to chalk up to stupidity or (ham-fisted) Sinocentrism; near the end of the film, PRC cops show up in uniform in Taipei.

Because Taiwan is a province of China!

Really? Why don’t you use this:

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And go f@#$ yourself.

The Japanese are portrayed as hyper-sexualized, violent, pedophilic, psychotic, and unbalanced.

With lousy taste in hairstyles and clothes.

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“私の指の匂いを嗅ぐ!”

But I guess the filmmakers feel that’s how the Japanese really are, so that makes it okay. 

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 That’s how everyone in Japan dresses. Really…

The product placement is handled with all the grace and aplomb the rest of the film is; it would appear that there is only one brand of car on earth.

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Audi Audi everywhere.

The best thing I can say about  Switch/天機: 富春山居圖  is that at least I didn’t see the mainland version, which apparently runs 10 minutes longer than the already excruciating 110-minute version I saw.

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“非常大!很辛苦!很黑!”

As is so often my central bone to pick with a movie, I blame the writer/director. 

In a recent interview, he makes some interesting statements:

“When I wrote the scrīpt of Switch two years ago, I didn’t intend to direct it… I just couldn’t find anybody else that was suitable.”

Suitable in this case meaning ‘appropriately mongoloid enough to willingly throw away all their respect, credibility, and professional future.’

“I was really touched by Andy Lau’s support… He fell in love with the movie…”

Well, Andy Lau recently apologized for being in this movie, so that basically leaves you with a mouth full of sh*t, doesn’t it?

Andy Lau should apologize.

This movie stunk worse than an elephant’s balls in August.

“I also want to try hard to test the overseas market for the film.”

It’s about the same as the market for Chinese milk powder. 

“I think our movie is easy for any people to understand story-wise.”

If ‘people’ doesn’t include two PhD holders who were completely baffled by the narrative clusterf@#k that you call a movie, then you’re right.

“And western audiences want to watch something new from China.”

Yeah, they do. But this film’s typical Chinese frothing, as evidenced by its wholly unsubtle demonizing of Japan and Britain, shows us that it’s really just more of the same jingoistic crap.

The West does want something new from China.

But this movie sure as hell ain’t it.

Switch/天機: 富春山居圖 is garbage.

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Even with a red bow on it.

But don’t take my word for it.

Or the word of a metric f@#$-ton of Chinese netizens who savaged this movie like sailors on 12-hour shore leave.

This is one of those instances where I want you to see  Switch/天機: 富春山居圖 just so you know what a REALLY shitty movie looks like. 

And so that I won’t have suffered alone.

11 年多 前 0 赞s  1 评论  0 shares
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i'm waiting for the directors recut.... it can only get less horrible! :-P
11 年多 ago

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If we don't support the movies that deserve it, we get the movies that we deserve.

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Hong Kong
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April 1, 2008