KUNG FU CYBORG: METALLIC ATTRACTION review
To say that here at ScreenAnarchy we have been eagerly anticipating the release of Jeffrey Lau's new science fiction romantic comedy would be overstating it slightly, but we have to-date devoted a fair few column inches to gawking and rubbernecking at the progress of Lau's self-proclaimed Chinese answer to TRANSFORMERS.
Well, it has now opened in Hong Kong and it will come as no surprise to learn that it really isn't any good at all. The "final trailer" that we have featured elsewhere on the site is a far superior piece of filmmaking than the finished product, which while not without the occasional laugh or well-struck note of romanticism, is by and large a waste of time. It takes nearly an hour for big robots to start hitting each other and even then, the money shots are spent with agonising frugality, the film repeatedly substituting action sequences for the clumsy fumblings of a timid love triangle - strike that - love pentagon.
Loyal patriot and all-round top cop Du Shan (Hu Jun), is selected by the mysterious government official Mr. Lin (Eric Tsang) to baby-sit a new addition in his rural police unit, K-1 (Alex Fong) - a top secret cyborg on a mission to track down a rogue android. K-1 has been designed to resemble Andy Lau by way of a Grease revival night, with quiffed jet black hair, leather jacket and a penchant for offering out cigarettes and fixing computers by sticking his finger in them. He can fly, see through walls and fire tranquilliser darts from his fingertips. He can even transform himself into a rocket-powered motorcycle should he need to make a hasty exit. A slight oversight to his design is that his battery only lasts for about 12 hours before requiring a time-consuming recharge from a specially designed armchair that runs off the mains, presumably making him pretty useless for long term reconnaissance or field work. He is also incapable of love, which causes problems when token female police officer Su Mei (Sun Li) takes a shine to him, complicating the fact that Du Shan is secretly in love with her, as is local geek Jiang (Ronald Cheng), although Su Mei's crazy sister has a bit of a thing for him.
These escalatingly comical antics threaten to take over the film completely, as K-1 clears the station's entire backlog of cases in the blink of an eye, while remaining oblivious to the cautious advances of his new colleague. Misunderstandings, misconceptions and much misdirection ensues until eventually Mr. Lin pops up again to point K-1 and Du Shan in the direction of Wu Jing's errant K-88, a cyborg who has dared to question his identity, purpose and fate.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to concede that once the film does shift into sci-fi spectacle, the tedious shackles of the preceding 50-odd minutes are forgotten and it really kicks some ass. But sadly, that's not the case. K-1 and K-88 do morph from their human size and form into giant battle bots, who suddenly inhabit an unrecognisable nondescript mid-air environment, in which they can strike hero poses and fly at each other, CGI a-sparkling. For a minute or two it is diverting and the decidedly unexpected outcome of this clash seems momentarily daring, but leaves the film in something of a dead end, narratively. They do a fair job of digging themselves out of the problem but it all seems unnecessarily complicated and means the audience is presented with an "explosive finale" against a villain with no established identity or modus operandi.
Sadly there is very little in the way of kung fu, by cyborgs or anyone else. The film actually has a rather spiffy opening credits sequence that resembles Chris Cunningham's music video to Bjork's "All is Full of Love" as assembly lines of limbs are constructed. We see robotic torsos practising wing chun moves in a tantalising glimmer that is never capitalised on. Wu Jing in particular is wasted in his role of K-88. He has one brief opportunity to showcase his talents against a couple of minions, but it is all over far too quickly and involves some kind of cyborg chi energy that means he actually doesn't make contact with his opponents anyway.
The score shamelessly rips off everything from Michael Jackson to Ennio Morricone as it tiptoes around the boundaries of copyright infringement, while the story, or rather its conceit, borrows from the great minds of Dick and Asimov. The script even has K-88 spouting Shakespeare to express his inner yearnings for freedom and a better understanding, but these ideas are never explored. Instead we have flimsy realisations about love and responsibility and a screenful of cartoonish CGI to wrap things up. I was willing to acknowledge and then let slide Lau's budgetary and technological constraints if he had something interesting or at least amusing to say, but save for Ronald Cheng gurning in a set of false teeth and thick glasses, and the occasional sight gag of malfunctioning bodily mechanisms, KUNG FU CYBORG invokes precious little attraction, metallic or otherwise.
