Goddess of Mercy
by Ann Hui
from Tai Seng
This latest film from acclaimed director Ann Hui (July Rhapsody, Visible Secret) was selected as the opening film of the 2004 HK International Film Festival. Adapted from a bestselling pulp-romance from China, Goddess Of Mercy is the story of policewoman Anxin (Vicki Zhao from The Duel and Shaolin Soccer) and her intricate love lives with three men - her devoted fiancé, a drug trafficker, and the young and mesmerizing Mao Jie (Nicholas Tse from A Man Called Hero and My Schoolmate The Barbarian)..
Zodiac Killers
by Ann Hui
from Tai Seng Entertainment
Zodiac Killers
by Ann Hui
from Tai Seng
Acclaimed director ANN HUI helms this brooding mystery thriller starring ANDY LAU (The Duel, Running Out Of Time) and CHERIE CHUNG (An Autumn's Tale). Caught up in Japan's yakuza underworld at Tokyo's Shinjuku district, Chinese students Ben (Lau) and his new found love Tieh-lan (Chung) must find a way to escape from gangsters assigned to take their lives.
Swordsman
by Andrew Kam
from Tai Seng
Every 15 minutes there's a flabbergasting sword fight. All the warriors can fly over, or dismember, their opponents with a flick of the wrist. (The action was staged by Ching Siu-tung, the director of A Chinese Ghost Story.) Eyeballs are extracted, wrists snap, heads explode. The caffeine-rush editing style and its tendency to scream and throw things (usually right at our heads) is almost alienating; it distracts us from a story line that would be difficult to parse even at normal speeds. A scroll known as the Sacred Volume, offering the secret to a powerful martial arts technique, has been filched from the imperial library in Beijing, and the snippy eunuchs assigned to guard it are waxing wroth. An amiable wandering swashbuckler known as Fox, Ling Hu-ching (Sam Hui), from the Wah Mountain School of Swordsmen, gets tagged with the hopeless assignment of retrieving the lost scroll. Wu Ma and Lin Zheng-ying, as noble old martial artists, sing a song together and then die staunchly. Various other factions of fighters, including the glorious women of the rebel Sun and Moon Society of broad-hatted "Highlanders" (who make their living smuggling salt) also express an interest in the scroll--and their principle modes of expression are all fiercely martial. Adapted from the novel The Laughing Swordsman, by Louis Cha (a.k.a. Jin Yong), the H. Rider Haggard of Asia. Cha's story about the character's youth, Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, is available in English. --David Chute
American Grandson
Acclaimed director Ann Hui (Ah Kam, Visible Secret) helms this touching tale of culture barriers and generation gap. When a teenage ABC (America Born Chinese) is sent to China to live with his grandfather during his summer vacation, cultural and language differences between them lead to tension-filled encounters. But as time wears on, the two of them begin to develop a bonding relationship, and a deeper understanding of their shared roots.
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