Tag: Kenny Wong Tak-Ban

Unidentified Murder (UFO離奇命案, Kwok Ka-Hei & Jack Lee Chun-Kit, 2025)

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The line between a prank and a scam maybe be necessarily thin in Kwok Ka-Hei and Jack Lee Chun-Kit farcical comedy Unidentified Murder (UFO離奇命案) in which nothing is quite as it first seems. Unfolding with an almost Rashomon-like structure, the film slowly peels back the layers of reality to reveal that pretty much everyone is playing a trick on someone, sometimes rooted in a childish sense of fun, but equally a desire for attention and the money that can be generated from it in today’s attention-obsessed society.

Twenty-five years ago, Kit (Ronald Lam Tsz-Kit) and Mark (Ling Man-lung) went up the mountain with their friend Ho but returned alone. Ho’s disappearance has apparently become a legendary local mystery with the boys claiming that Ho was abducted by aliens, though some seem to believe that their story is either a trauma-born fiction or a deliberate attempt to disguise their role in whatever may have happened to their friend. In any case, the film opens with an attempt by online content creator Man (Renci Yeung) of the “Prank My Boyfriend” video channel to play a trick on her boyfriend Mark by getting an actor, Kim (Peter Chan Charm-Man), to be the retuned Ho abruptly released by the aliens after 25 years. To begin with, this doesn’t seem like a very funny prank and could be crushingly insensitive. One might assume the now middle-aged men are carrying a degree of trauma about the failure to protect their friend, or else if they really were responsible for his disappearance in someway, it could turn out of be a dangerous situation for everyone. 

Nevertheless, Mark doesn’t seem to be particularly phased by Man’s prank and, on fact, sets out of prank her back by getting Kim onside to pretend that he and Kit kill him while planning to move Ho’s body due to the increased interest generated by the incident’s 25th birthday. This doesn’t seem like a very funny prank either, and it’s difficult to deny that this ultimately farcical situation began with a series of very bad decisions especially as this particular stunt is intended to work up to a marriage proposal. Unfortunately, however, nothing goes to plan and when it looks like Kim might be dead for real, the gang get a mysterious text trying to blackmail them threatening to release Man’s video of them murdering Kim online.

Or course, there’s a possibility that this is another prank too, or, to be frank, more of a scam. In this world, nothing really is certain and no one is really who they seem to be. A good friend might be playing a trick on you that could unwittingly be hurtful or insensitive though they may not mean it, while likewise they may be trying to con you out of a bit money to fight their own desperate circumstances. There’s a kind of childishness that underplays most of the trickery like a lie told by a child to get out of trouble that they then have to commit to for the rest of their lives. In this way a trick can become a shared secret, like an alternate reality that binds people together in ways few other things can. Others my be wilfully deceived by watching things like the Stardust Memories channel that purports to show evidence of aliens but may not be completely on the level. To that extent, at least Man’s channel is honest about its intentions even if it’s not clear to what extent Mark is already in on the joke.

Even if you regard it as harmless fun, these pranks too could wind up having devastating consequences and escalating to levels of death and violence all based on a series of misunderstandings. So confusing do things become while out in the mountain forest that Man even tries to grab the gun from a policeman and points it at her friends certain that they’re pranking her only to be shocked when the gun later goes off. But what could have unraveled a long-time mystery and exposed things best left buried or resulted in deadly consequences instead becomes another bonding exercise in which a group of people generate an unexpected friendship though all being in on the joke, each letting the incident end with good humour and no harm done. Filled with farcical comedy and an ironic cynicism the film seems to say that in this world where everything is grift being in on joke might be the only thing that makes life worth living.

Unidentified Murder screens as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

One More Chance (別叫我”賭神, Anthony Pun Yiu-Ming, 2023)

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A feckless gambler gets a final shot at redemption when he’s suddenly asked to take care of an autistic son he never knew he had in Anthony Pun Yiu-Ming’s nostalgic drama, One More Chance (別叫我”賭神). Previously titled “Be Water, My Friend”, the film has had a troubled production history only reaching cinema screen four years after filming concluded in March 2019 and has been retitled in the Chinese “Don’t Call Me the God of Gamblers” which seems to be a blatant attempt to cash in the audience’s fond memories of similarly pitched Chow Yun-fat vehicles from the ’80s and ’90s such as All About Ah Long.

In truth, Chow is probably a little old for the role he’s cast to play as the middle-aged barber Water who’s long since fled to Macao in an attempt to escape problems with loansharks caused by his gambling addition. Of course, Macao is one of the worst places someone with a gambling problem could go and so Water is already up to his neck in debt and a familiar face at the local casino. That’s one reason he ends up going along with the proposal of old flame Lee Xi (Anita Yuen Wing-Yee) to look after her grownup son, Yeung (Will Or Wai-Lam), who is autistic, for a month in return for 50,000 HK dollars up front and another 50,000 at the end assuming all goes well. She claims that Water is Yeung’s father and even provides forms for him to send off for a DNA test if he doesn’t believe her, but at this point all Water is interested in is the cash. 

To begin with, he pretty much thinks of Yeung as cash cow, descending on a Rain Man-esque path of using him to up his gambling game but otherwise frustrated by his needs and ill-equipped to care for an autistic person whom he makes little attempt to understand. For his part, Yeung adapts well enough and tries to make the best of his new circumstances but obviously misses his mother and struggles when Water selfishly disrupts his routines. For all that, however, it’s largely Yeung who is looking after Water, tidying the apartment and bringing a kind of order into his life while forcing him to reckon with the self-destructive way he’s been living. 

Picking up a casino chip in the opening sequence, Water describes it as a “chance” in an echo of the way he’s been gambling his life just as he decides to gamble on taking in Yeung. At one point, he wins big on the horses but takes his winnings straight to the casino where he’s wiped out after staking everything on a single bet only to realise he’s been played by another grifter at the table. It seems that Xi left him because of his gambling problem and the resultant change in his lifestyle that had made it impossible for her to stay or raise a child with him, causing Water to become even more embittered and cynical. Where once he provided a refuge for wayward young men trying to get back on the straight and narrow, now he’s hassled by petty gangsters over his massive debts.

Nevertheless, it’s re-embracing his paternity that begins to turn his life around as he bonds with Yeung and begins to have genuine feelings for him rather than just fixating on the money while simultaneously recognising that Yeung is already a man and able to care for himself in many more ways than others may assume. One could say that he gambles on the boy, staking his life on him rather than endless rolls of the dice to fill an emotional void but also rediscovering a sense of himself and who he might have been if he had not developed a gambling problem and left it up to chance to solve all his problems. Unabashedly sentimental, the film flirts with nostalgia in the presence of Chow and Anita Yuen and largely looks back the Hong Kong classics of the 80s and 90s if with half an eye on the Mainland censors board, Bruce Lee shrine not withstanding, but nevertheless presents a heartwarming tale of father and son bonding and paternal redemption as Water crosses the desert and finally reclaims himself from his life of dissipation. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Breakout Brothers (逃獄兄弟, Mak Ho-Pong, 2020)

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“I’m treating this as a vacation” says affable triad Chan (Louis Cheung Kai-Chung) of his three month prison term, after all it’s rent free and three meals a day who could say no to that in the difficult economic environment of pre-handover Hong Kong? Nevertheless, it’s hardly a vacation if you can’t cut it short and Chan, along with two buddies, will eventually find reasons to want to leave. Mak Ho-pong’s genial prison break comedy Breakout Brothers (逃獄兄弟) takes occasional subversive potshots against an increasingly corrupt social order but eventually discovers that you can’t escape social responsibility while the real reward is indeed the friends you make along the way. 

That is at least the conclusion that newbie prisoner Mak (Adam Pak Tin-Nam) comes to after being pulled into an escape plan formulated by petty gangster Chan who decides to make a break for it after learning that his dear mother has been taken ill and needs a kidney transplant which only he can give her. Thinking of his prison time as a vacation from the pressures of everyday life, Chan has been a low maintenance prisoner and therefore assumed the warden would agree to a temporary release to let him help his mum, but Warden Tang (Kenny Wong Tak-Ban) who has already served a “life sentence” of 30 years in post has recently been promised a promotion and doesn’t want anything to mess it up like a prisoner turning fugitive while on hospital leave. Spotting a workman disappearing from a storeroom and emerging Mario-style from a manhole on the other side of the fence Chan gets an idea and enlists Mak, an architect inside after being framed for taking bribes, to help him figure out the logistics, and Big Roller (Patrick Tam Yiu-Man), leader of the prison’s second biggest gang, for access and protection. 

The guys’ predicaments are perhaps embodiments of the age, Chan wanting out for reasons of filial piety while for Big Roller it’s in a sense the reverse in learning the daughter he was told had died is in fact alive and about to be married. Mak meanwhile wants out because he’s a sitting duck inside, the shady construction CEO who framed him for signing off on lax safety procedures which led to a fire in a prominent building having enlisted the services of rival gangster Scar (Justin Cheung Kin-Seng) to intimidate him into dropping his appeal. Hints of institutional corruption extend to the colonial prison system with guards quite clearly intimidated by prisoners and often turning a blind eye to cellblock violence while it’s also implied that Warden Tang has in a sense facilitated the rise of Scar at the expense of Big Roller as a means of maintaining order. He, like the colonial authorities, will soon be on his way but anticipating his own freedom is keen there be no trouble which is why he refuses Chan’s compassionate leave and extends little sympathy to new boy Mak. 

In any case, the real draw is the bumbling crime caper of the guys planning a heist-style escape which is, in the history of prison escapes, not an especially elaborate one. The prison is not exactly max security, and as they plan to escape during the celebrations for the Mid-August festival none of them are anticipating much difficulty in making it to the outside though as expected not quite everything goes to plan. Mak, meanwhile, eventually takes Big Roller’s advice and decides to stay inside to clear his name properly while the gang ensure his safety rather than try to live as a guilty fugitive and possibly be caught only to end up with more time. The other two have more pressing temporary goals and have not perhaps considered what to do after they’ve completed them, believing only that their lives are untenable if they cannot fulfil their duties as father and son respectively. 

Perhaps for this reason, the Mainland-friendly conclusion has each of the men recommitting themselves to paying their debts to society, Chan even insisting that he’s going to use his time wisely to improve his education in order to be a better husband and son while Big Roller promises to become a carpenter for real. Mak gets a partial vindication in that the shady CEO is finally forced to face justice while also realising that his slightly elitist, individualist stance has been mistaken thanks to the warm and genuine relationships he’s discovered inside. More comedy crime caper than tense prison break thriller, Breakout Brothers remains true to its name in prioritising the unconventional friendship that develops between the trio as they bond in a shared sense of existential rather than literal imprisonment. 

Breakout Brothers screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English / Traditional Chinese subtitles)