Amazing

神奇

China, 2013, colour, 2.35:1, 110 mins.

Director: Hu Xuehua 胡雪桦 [Sherwood Hu].

Rating: 3/10.

Messy, splashy VFX drama centred on a basketball computer game is no credit to anyone.

STORY

Shanghai, the present day. Talented gaming programmer Bing Shan (Huang Xiaoming), 28, a former employee of US-based company Dimension Door, is spotted trying to hack into Amazing, a basketball game he had worked on. DD’s CEO Frank Miller (Eric Mabius) alerts the city’s female cyberpolice, led by Xiaoke (Li Qin). Tipped off, Bing Shan escapes and visits Frank Miller to settle their private score in a one-on-one basketball game in the rain. Bing Shan loses and is arrested by the cyberpolice but Frank Miller agrees to him cleaning the game of the dangerous Blue Crystal Virus that Bing Shan had always claimed was present in the system in the character of Venus (Guo Caijie), the game’s administrator. Going into the virtual reality of the game, Bing Shan “loses” to Venus, and ends up in hospital in a coma caused by renal cerebral palsy. A month earlier, Frank Miller had arrived from the US as DD’s new CEO, to restore its tottering fortunes and make it the most powerful gaming company in Asia. He had appointed Bing Shan team head on Amazing, the world’s first thought-controlled computer game, but Bing Shan only agreed when Frank Miller offered him a US$500,000 bonus if the launch was successful. Bing Shan had intended to use the money to start a company with his friends Pepper (Feng Delun) and Blackie (Chen Jianzhou), both also basketball enthusiasts. Meanwhile, Frank Miller had started to re-romance DD senior employee Eileen (Gim A-jung), with whom he’d failed a few years ago, but was unaware that Eileen was now Bing Shan’s partner. On Level 6 of the game, Bing Shan had discovered there was a “crash bug” in the programme that was controlled by Venus and potentially dangerous to gamers’ health. Frank Miller had denied it and refused to stop developing Amazing. At the launch, however, Bing Shan had gone public and Frank had sacked him – supported by Eileen.

REVIEW

The only surprise about basketball gaming drama Amazing 神奇 is quite how amazingly awful it is. Suffused with a desperate desire to be as American as possible in its attitudes and production values, but also to be resolutely Shanghainese in spirit and look – most of the city’s landmarks are checked off during the interminable 110 minutes running time – the film ends up as a stateless cultural hybrid that’s unlikely to please anybody. Shanghai-born, New York-educated director Hu Xuehua 胡雪桦 [Sherwood Hu] – best known for the prehistoric tribal drama Warrior Lanling 兰陵王 (1995), shot in an invented language, and Hamlet riff Prince of the Himalayas 喜玛拉雅王子 (2006), shot in Tibetan – has always been known more for his splashy visuals than his sense of drama, and so it is with Amazing.

The movie looks just fine on the widescreen thanks to Mainland d.p. Hou Yong 侯咏 (The Blue Kite 蓝风筝, 1993; Warrior Lanling; The Road Home 我的父亲母亲, 1999) and Hong Kong’s Pan Yaoming 潘耀明 [Anthony Pun] (Overheard 窃听风云, 2009; Shaolin 新少林寺, 2011; The Silent War 听风者, 2012) but by any other criteria it’s a cliched, predictable mess, with a script that just keeps getting worse and barely makes any sense at a character or psychological level. Cast way below his usual level, Huang Xiaoming 黄晓明 (An Inaccurate Memoir 匹夫, 2012; American Dreams in China 中国合伙人, 2013) exudes a hunky leading-man charisma but is asked to utter dialogue that sounds just as corny in Chinese as it does in English, while South Korean actress Gim A-jung 김아중 | 金亚中 (200 Pounds Beauty 미녀는 괴로워, 2006), is poorly revoiced in both languages and spends most of the time either looking lost or making no impression as an actress beyond her wardrobe.

Hong Kong’s Feng Delun 冯德伦 [Stephen Fung], equally sloppily revoiced, keeps popping up as the hero’s friend to minimal effect, and Taiwan’s Guo Caijie 郭采洁 [Amber Kuo] (Close to You 近在咫尺, 2010; David Loman 大尾鲈鳗, 2013), as a virtual-reality character, is basically just a face surrounded by the okay visual effects (courtesy Base FX). Somewhere in all this, Mainland actress Huang Yi 黄奕 appears to have largely got lost in the editing. Not so, a collection of real-life US and Chinese basketball stars, whose cameos punctuate the movie for no dramatic reason.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Film Group (CN), Shanghai Film Studio (CN), Tang Dynasty Culture Communication (CN), Shanghai Stone-Capital Culture Investment (CN).

Script: Zeng Jinchang, Hu Xuehua, Li Haishu, Qin Zhen, Huang Sisi. Photography: Hou Yong, Pan Yaoming [Anthony Pun]. Editing: Chen Xiaohong. Production design: Ma Guangrong [Horace Ma], Zhou Xinren. Costumes: Zhang Min. Sound: Jeffery Alan Jones. Visual effects: Xu An, August Zhuang (Base FX).

Cast: Huang Xiaoming (Bing Shan), Kim A-jung (Yilin/Eileen), Eric Mabius (Frank Miller), Feng Delun [Stephen Fung] (Hujiao/Pepper), Chen Jianzhou (Xiaohei/Blackie), Huang Yi (Sunflower), Guo Caijie [Amber Kuo] (Venus), Li Qin (Xiaoke), Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony, Scottie Pippen, Yi Jianlian, Wang Zhizhi, Wu You (themselves).

Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Competition), 17 Jun 2013.

Release: China, 30 Sep 2013.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 18 Jun 2013.)