David Loman

大尾鲈鳗

Taiwan, 2013, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 97 mins.

Director: Qiu Likuan 邱瓈宽.

Associate director: Huang Chaoliang 黄朝亮 .

Rating: 6/10.

Very local Taiwan gangster comedy gets by on its production values and light touch.

STORY

Taiwan, 1996. Following the island’s first direct election of a president, Zhu Dade (Zhuge Liang), a photographer in a small country town, moves with his three-year-old daughter Zhu Xiaoqin to the city of Taizhong, central Taiwan. As the economy booms, gang warfare mushrooms, and a meeting of gang leaders is held at the home of one, Zheng Qishuang, aka Qida (Lin Zhaoxiong), to decide on a top dog. A gun battle accidentally breaks out and all are killed; by luck, Zhu Dade, who’d been hired by Qida in gratitude for saving his mistress Nana (Miao Keli) from falling to her death one day, is chosen as Qida’s successor. Zhu Dade chooses an English name, David Loman, to give himself some “international” prestige. Some 15 years later, Zhu Xiaoqin (Guo Caijie) has grown into a tomboy college student who has a part-time job as a car mechanic and gives boys a hard time – including convenience store manager Toad (Ma Nianxian) and his assistant He Xiang (Yang Youning). She’s also estranged from her father, who’s neglected her since becoming a gangster. Suffering from stress, David Loman takes the advice of a local priest who orders him to find someone to replace him for three days. He chooses Old He (Zhuge Liang), He Xiang’s father, who looks just like him. Meanwhile, Qida’s son, Xiaoqida (Kang Kang), has returned from the US intent on taking over his father’s gang from David Loman. Xiaoqida tries to kidnap Zhu Xiaoqin but she’s rescued by He Xiang. He then has David Loman shot dead, not realising that he’s actually killed his stand-in. David Loman takes refuge with He Xiang, pretending to be his father, and the two set out to avenge Old He’s death by studying martial arts with Silly Pork (Chen Bozheng), master of the One-Fingered Technique. At the same time, thinking her father is dead, Zhu Xiaoqin also sets out to avenge his death.

REVIEW

After 30 years in the business, Taiwan manager-producer Qiu Likuan 邱瓈宽 makes her directing debut with gangster comedy David Loman 大尾鲈鳗, a well-packaged but very, very local movie that showcases veteran comic Zhuge Liang 猪哥亮 in a double role as a Taizhong gangster and his body-double. A popular entertainer during the 1980s, Chu, now 66, has made a big-screen comeback recently in supporting roles in films like Night Market Hero 鸡排英雄 (2011) and New Perfect Two 新天生一对 (2012), riding the growing Taiwan trend towards movies that grandstand local Hokkien values via the dialect and things like opera troupes, deities and gangsterism. Surrounded by a bevy of local character actors, and with his goofy pudding-basin haircut, Zhuge Liang (real name Xie Xinda 谢新达) dominates the movie in all its moods, riffing on untranslatable wordplays that won’t mean anything beyond the Hokkien-speaking world and held in check only by Qiu’s surprisingly disciplined and good-looking direction alongside associate Huang Chaoliang 黄朝亮 (Summer Time 夏天协奏曲, 2009; Love Is Sin 白天的星星, 2011).

The film starts ironically in nostalgic b&w, with Our Hero recalling how the island morphed in the 1990s from “a simple and honest agricultural era” via democracy to “an era of commerce in which a hundred flowers bloomed” – one of which was gangsterism. As the hoodlums accidentally blow each other away at a summit meeting, Our Hero is elected as the local godfather by the comically superstitious gangsters and the film then moves into colour and the present day, as the self-styled “David Loman” is now a twittish mobster dealing with small-time business. Wracked with stress over his relationship with his daughter, he takes the advice of a religious quack to take a rest and find a body-double to take his place for three days. When the double is blown away by a gangster rival, “David Loman” takes a crash course in martial arts to avenge the double’s death.

Most of the wordplay toilet humour is in the plot set-up during the film’s first half; once the main revenge plot takes shape – along with younger actors like Yang Youning 杨祐宁 and Guo Caijie 郭采洁 [Amber Kuo] – the script, lead written by Jian Shigeng 简士耕 (New Perfect Two), is more accessible at a general level, with moments of quite touching romance between the broader comic goofiness. Yang (Formula 17 17岁的天空, 2004) can’t do a lot with his nerdy role as the body double’s son; it’s Guo (Au revoir Taipei 一页台北, 2010) who gives the movie some real personality, as David Loman’s tomboy daughter who’s a more sympathetic version of her gym-rat in Close to You 近在咫尺 (2010). As Zhuge Liang, Guo and Yang’s characters become a band of masked avengers, the film gently sends up Chinese superheroes without becoming a visual effects extravaganza.

Director Qiu loads the movie with local character actors – including Kang Kang 康康 as David Loman’s nemesis, and Su Zhu 素珠, Lin Meixiu 林美秀 and Wang Caihua 王彩桦 as the double’s former mistresses – for a lot of comic schtick, and there’s an entertaining turn by Chen Bozheng 陈博正 (the opera troupe leader in another local hit, Din Tao: Leader of the Parade 阵头, 2012) as a martial-arts pork-seller. It’s all very parochial but done with an ingenuousness that doesn’t take itself seriously and doesn’t “promote” Taiwan values as cosily or heart-warmingly as movies like Night Market Hero or Din Tao.

The film’s dialogue is about 50/50 in Mandarin and Hokkien, with the younger cast naturally speaking the former. The Chinese title is a complicated worldplay on the English name chosen by the photographer-turned-gangster to give himself some “international” prestige. In Chinese it sounds like both “big-arsed swamp eel” 大尾鲈鳗 (dàwěi lúmán) and “big-arsed hoodlum” 大尾流氓 (dàwěi liúmáng).

CREDITS

Presented by Polyface Movie (TW), Poly Movies (TW). Produced by Polyface Movie (TW), Vision Films (TW).

Script: Jian Shigeng, Qiu Likuan, Li Yuanpu, Lin Mingqian, Chen Chengxiang, Wang Yemin. Photography: Lin Binghua. Editing: Chen Bowen. Music: Zhong Xingmin, Huang Yunling. Art direction: Lin Shikai. Sound: Zheng Xuzhi. Action: Cai Guozhou.

Cast: Zhuge Liang (Zhu Dade/David Loman; Lao He/Old He), Yang Youning (He Xiang/Xiaohe, He’s son), Guo Caijie [Amber Kuo] (Zhu Xiaoqin, Zhu Dade’s daughter), Chen Bozheng (Zhurou Xi/Silly Pork, martial-arts butcher), Su Zhu (He’s first mistress), Lin Meixiu (He’s second mistress), Wang Caihua (He’s third mistress), Miao Keli (Nana, Zheng Qishuang’s mistress), Kang Kang (Xiaoqida, Zheng Qishuang’s son), Huang Licheng (doctor), Lin Zhaoxiong (Zheng Qishuang/Qida/Boss Pinch), Ma Nianxian (Chanchu/Toad), Chen Muyi (temple shaman), Rong Xiang (gangster), Maria (Maria), Ying Weimin (policeman), Zhao Xun (neighbourhood head), Ye Futai (Fu), Qiu Yifeng (killer), Tony Chen (hospital director), Li Xiaohan (young first mistress), Lin Weiru (young second mistress), Zhang Jiayun (young third mistress).

Release: Taiwan, 1 Feb 2013.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 12 May 2013.)