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Lost in Hong Kong (Blu-ray) AKA Gang jiong AKA Ren zai jiong tu: Gang jiong
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Well Go USA Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (28th February 2016). |
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The Film
 College student Xu Lai (No Man's Land's Zheng Xu) is a fervent admirer of Van Gogh and has a fantasy about opening a studio in the Arles with his as-yet-nonexistent loved one and creating art together. Although Xu Lai is a mediocre painter, his passion moves mousy business management student Cai Bo (Red Cliff's Wei Zhao) – "Spinach" to her friends – but he is infatuated with Andy Warhol enthusiast art student Yang Yi (American Dreams in China's Juan Du) who indicates her mild interest in him by allowing him to help her design some movie posters. Their relationship heats up, but fate has a way of disastrously (and comically) intervening – from accidental destruction of property to guard dogs and angry fathers – whenever they are about to kiss; thus, their love is unconsummated when Yang Yi is accepted into an international studies program and Xu Lai finds himself courted by Cai Bo. Ten years pass and Xu Lai has given up his artistic ambitions, lost his hair, and become an expert brassiere designer for his father-in-law's clothing company. Cai Bo has been trying to get pregnant without success and her prying family continually badgers Xu Lai about the physical or psychological reasons they have not conceived. Attending a class reunion, Xu Lai is disappointed that Yang Yi did not attend until he gets a call from her inviting him to her solo exhibition in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor. The business trip he arranges to Hong Kong inevitably becomes a family vacation with the in-laws tagging along. When Xu Lai plans to slip away to meet a "client", he finds that Cai Bo is going shopping – actually we see her meet up with a handsome Frenchman – and his in-laws all seem to have other plans, with the exception of his teenage brother-in-law Cai Lala (Zhongkui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal's Bei-Er Bao) who has made Xu Lai the subject of his extremely personal and invasive documentary. Consenting to a quick interview before heading to Yang Yi's exhibition, neither Xu Lai nor perfectionist Cai Lala notice that his camera has captured the murder of a man thrown out of a window in the skyscraper opposite Xu Lai's hotel room. Xu Lai sneaks out of the hotel and tries to lose Cai Lala who doggedly pursues him throughout the city – especially once he has surmised that Xu Lai is trying to make a booty call – and they in turn are pursued by a pair of cops (Jackie Chan's Gorgeous's Eric Kot and Gen-X Cops's Sam Lee) investigating the homicide through a series of misadventures involving the Wong Jing (City Hunter) action film shoot "Gangsters vs Ironheads", an S&M club in search of a locksmith, a Raid-esque chase through the tenement lair of a crime boss (Election's Suet Lam), and other injurious action setpieces that have Xu Lai thinking that fate is intervening again and maybe he and Yang Yi are just not meant to be. An in-name-only follow-up to star Zheng's directorial debut Lost in Thailand, Lost in Hong Kong is a thoroughly farcical action comedy overstuffed with comic incident and wire stuntwork that also betrays Zheng's affection for Hong Kong cinema at its most intensely romantic on the one hand and action-packed on the other with blatant visual, aural, and dialogue quotations of Kar-wai Wong's Chungking Express and 2046 (although the gorgeous Juan is no Maggie Cheung), John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, and even the theme song from Hark Tsui's A Chinese Ghost Story among others (some of which will be easier to spot for HK film enthusiasts). Although frequently exhilarating in its action and hilarious, it is also somewhat of a "bromantic comedy" with much of the slapstick between Xu Lai and his brother-in-law while everything ends up working out for our protagonist with the women in his life accepting that him choosing between them is a symbolic choice between realizing unfulfilled wishes and "accepting [his] losses." The film fares best zipping from one absurd action set-piece to another with great stunts and action too loopy to look for fault in the CGI and visual effects. The film is shot-through with cameos from HK cinema regulars including Richard Ng (Winners & Sinners), Kai Man Tin (Mr. Vampire), Bobby Yip (Ebola Syndrome), and Jerry Lamb (He's a Woman, She's a Man).
Video
Well Go USA gives this Arri Alexa-photographed production a relatively strong 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.40:1 widescreen encode given the film's heavy use of CGI and punched up color correction and contrast adjustments.
Audio
Audio options include a Mandarin/Cantonese/French DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 that is rather sedate during the ten minute opening but becomes fully active and pretty much stays that way from the opening credits onwards. A Mandarin/Cantonese/French Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo is also available. The disc's exportability may be made more attractive by the inclusion of Chinese subtitles in addition to the English ones.
Extras
Thee extras are rather insubstantial. The making-of consists of three short promos: "The Stunts" (1:23) is just long enough for Zheng Xu to declare that Hong Kong stunt teams are the go-to guys for high tension wirework while "The Actors" (1:47) races by with a montage of the "A-list supporting cast" without actually name-checking any of them, and "The Characters" (1:47) is more interested in showing off the faces rather than going into any depth about the roles they play. The blooper reel (1:48) is of the same style and the hilarity of the blown lines gets lost in the translation. The disc also features the film's trailer (2:05) and previews for other titles (which also appear as start-up trailers).
Overall
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