Night Market Hero

鸡排英雄

Taiwan, 2011, colour, 2.35:1, 123 mins.

Director: Ye Tianlun 叶天伦.

Rating: 6/10.

Likeable but over-long and predictable heartwarmer about street hawkers battling big business.

STORY

Taibei, the present day. In a ballot by all the stallholders, young Chen Yihua (Lan Zhenglong) is elected union leader of 888 Night Market, a quarrelsome but tightly-bound group of traders who include steak hawker Jin Aizhu (Wang Caihua) and chicken-fritter hawker Qiu Manmei (Yan Yiwen) – who are always competing with each other for customers – grilled sausage hawker Wang Guoping, aka King 18 (Zhao Zhengping), who once owned a nightclub and is Jin Aizhu’s lover, sexy cosmetics hawker Lin Meixiang (Liu Pinyan) who attracts schoolboys with their cameras, and Chen Yihua’s friend Little Seven (Cai Changxian), Qiu Manmei’s younger brother. One night, in a scooter accident, Chen Yihua meets and falls for Lin Yi’nan (Ke Jiayan), who works as a photographer for Happy Weekly News magazine, thanks to her late father’s friendship with its acerbic editor (Yang Qi). Lin Yi’nan, who’s just moved out on her surgeon boyfriend Chris (Wen Shenghao), is unhappy living alone and easily flies into temper-tantrums. After one when she is elected 888 Night Market Queen against her will, she’s forced to do community service on the stalls, not realising the whole thing was arranged by Chen Yihua in order to get to know her better. After Chris dumps her over the phone, Lin Yi’nan and Chen Yihua become friendlier, and he invites her home for a meal cooked by his grandmother (Wu Cui’e). Meanwhile, Yung Sheng Construction has plans to build a large mall-cum-leisure centre on the site occupied by 888 Night Market, and has bribed local councillor Zhang Jinliang (Zhuge Liang) to push the NT$800 million proposal through. The stallholders are given 30 days to move out, but they refuse. And then Lin Yi’nan alerts the media.

REVIEW

With its foodstalls setting, mix of dialects (Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka) and scooters galore, Night Market Hero 鸡排英雄 is as Taiwan as a bowl of beef soup noodle – and therein lies both its strengths and its weaknesses. This first feature by Ye Tianlun 叶天伦 (son of 1985 drama Sayonara Goodbye 莎哟哪啦，再见！director Ye Jinsheng 叶金胜) is essentially a feel-good ensemble movie grouping local comedy veterans like Zhuge Liang 猪哥亮 and Wang Caihua 王彩桦 with younger names like actor-model Lan Zhenglong 蓝正龙 (Fantôme, où es-tu? 酷马, 2010) and Ke Jiayan 柯佳嬿 (Monga 艋舺, 2010; Miao Miao 渺渺, 2008) in a heartwarmer extolling the power of community values and Taiwan “street democracy” over the forces of political corruption and venal property developers. Luckily, it doesn’t take itself too seriously and, at least in the first half, laughs at its characters’ local nationalism as much as at itself – notably in a group song extolling the beauties of the island and Alishan mountain.

As a local New Year crowdpleaser it hits all the right buttons, but at over two hours long it badly starts to show its lack of originality in the second half as the corruption story takes over and the drama becomes more predictable and mawkish. Ye, who also co-wrote the script with his sister Ye Danqing 叶丹青, keeps the pot pleasantly bubbling during the first hour with a nice array of characters and a real feel for night-market life, though both they and the structure are basically TV-sketch-like and the verbal humour, with its fruity use of dialect, is hard for non-locals to appreciate fully. (For its Mainland release in July 2011, as the first Taiwan movie to be excluded from China’s foreign quota, the dialogue has all been flattened into Mandarin.) In the end, the performances by the older actors are the movie’s main strength, with Lan just OK as a typically mumbly, good-looking hero and Gui Lunmei 桂纶镁 lookalike Ke cutely spirited but not given much more to do.

CREDITS

Presented by Green Film Production (TW), Grand Vision (TW). Produced by Green Film Production (TW).

Script: Ye Danqing, Ye Tianlun. Photography: Qin Dingchang. Editing: Xiao Ruguan. Music: Lv Shengfei. Art direction: Weng Dingyang. Costume design: Pan Lunlin. Sound: Du Duzhi.

Cast: Zhuge Liang (Zhang Jinliang, councillor), Lan Zhenglong (Chen Yihua), Ke Jiayan (Lin Yi’nan), Wang Caihua (Jin Aizhu, steak hawker), Zhao Zhengping (Wang Guoping/Shiba Wang/King 18, grilled-sausage hawker, Jin Aizhu’s lover), Wu Cui’e (Chen Wangju, Chen Yihua’s grandmother), Lv Xuefeng (Shui, Lin Meixiang’s mother), Fan Guangyao (Luo Shangde, Zhang Jinliang’s chief advisor), Liu Pinyan (Lin Meixiang, cosmetics seller), Ying Weimin (Cai Honggui/Hong Gui/Red Turtle, gangster), Cai Changxian (Little Seven, Qiu Manmei’s younger brother), Yan Yiwen (Qiu Manmei, chicken-fritter hawker), Wang Jingguan (road worker), Li Liren (Lin Yi’nan’s father), Wen Shenghao (Chris, Lin Yi’nan’s doctor boyfriend), Zhong Xinling (Happy Weekly News receptionist), Yang Qi (Happy Weekly News editor), Liang Yongquan (young Chen Yihua), Zhang Shiying (herself), Hao Shaoting (Fattie, Jin Aizhu’s son), Zhu Qingyu (young Lin Yi’nan), Wu Guozhou (Jin Aizhu’s assistant).

Release: Taiwan, 28 Jan 2011.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 22 Jul 2011.)