#27 Movie Review: Unbeatable ❤
As usual, million thanks to Nuffnang for the tickets. (:
The present day: After a biking holiday in Yunnan province, China, Lin
Siqi (Eddie Peng), the son of a wealthy businessman (Jack Kao), returns
to Beijing and bumps into an old friend, Chen (Wang Baoqiang), who is
enjoying some conspicuous spending after his father died and left him a
fortune.
In Hong Kong, meanwhile, Hong Kong taxi driver Ching Fai, aka
"Scumbag Fai" (Nick Cheung), a former boxer and ex-con with gambling
debts of HK$200,000 (US$25,000), flees to neighbouring Macau and gets a
menial job at the gym of old friend Tai-sui (Philip Keung).
He rents a
room in the flat of Wang Mingjun (Mei Ting), a Mainlander who has a
10-year-old daughter, Leung Pui-dan (Crystal Lee). Mingjun still suffers
from depression, after a nervous breakdown when her husband left them
for another women four years ago, and Ching Fai slowly becomes attached
to her and the mouthy Pui-dan. Meanwhile, Siqi has washed up, penniless,
in Macau with his father, who has lost the will to live after being
bankrupted by a stock-market collapse.
Finding work as a manual
labourer, Siqi decides to enter the forthcoming Golden Rumble MMA
Championship, which has a purse of HK$2 million. With some experience in
taekwondo, he enrols at the same gym where Ching Fai happens to work,
in order to learn MMA.
After Ching Fai by chance helps out Siqi one night when the
latter's father turns violent, Ching Fai agrees to help Siqi with his
MMA training, even though the championship is only 10 weeks away.
However, Ching Fai, despite being 48, also harbours a secret desire to
compete for the prize money which he so desperately needs.
Review
The main focus of this drama is on two male
protagonists, here not on opposite sides of the law but brought together
by the need for money to fix their lives and the need to win for
personal self-esteem. The relationships and sub-plots are all totally
formulaic (suffering single mum, beautiful ex-girlfriend, pushy kid,
ex-boxer gone wrong, rich kid on the skids with a problem father to
support).
But it's sustained by the acting of Nick Cheung, who makes his middle-aged loser a genuinely shaded, believable character, and by the chemistry between him and Peng, which even gets away with them sending up the borderline homo-erotic aspects of the movie, with super-buff male torsos fulsomely on display. (In this respect, Cheung, 45, who trained particularly hard for the role, gives Peng, 31, a serious run for his money.)
But it's sustained by the acting of Nick Cheung, who makes his middle-aged loser a genuinely shaded, believable character, and by the chemistry between him and Peng, which even gets away with them sending up the borderline homo-erotic aspects of the movie, with super-buff male torsos fulsomely on display. (In this respect, Cheung, 45, who trained particularly hard for the role, gives Peng, 31, a serious run for his money.)
I would rate this movie: 4/5. To know more about this movie, please watch the trailer below. (:
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Thanks for reading =)