Hollywood comes to Asia

The place is Taipei, the time, summer of 2001. Three murders have taken place, a CEO of a multinational enterprise, a woman alleged to be the mistress of a legislator, and an American missionary, who has been ritually disemboweled, a strange icon drawn on his belly. Police suspect that his murder is related to his background as an arms dealer. All three corpses have a rare fungus in their nose. The police and the FBI investigate.

Taiwan films have made a reputation for realism and this radical departure from the tradition, with its echoes of Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, is a new direction for local film and director Chen Kuo-fu (陳國富). It is also one of four projects for 2001 that are the result of Columbia Tristar's new Asian investment in the wake of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's (臥虎藏龍) international success. The film is called Double Vision and it started shooting at the beginning of April.

A suspense thriller with big cast from Taiwan, Hong Kong and US will be the film's main attraction, with Taiwan's hottest film property Rene Liu (劉若英) playing the female lead and Tony Leung (梁家輝) taking the leading male role. David Morse (Contact, Dancer in the Dark and Proof of Life), the film's other main actor, visited Taiwan last week. He will be playing the American missionary who meets with the grizzly end.

Double Vision is the first Hollywood-invested film to be set in Taipei. It is also one of a very few local movies that can be described as a thriller, as most local products have tended to concentrate on realism. Chen's movie credits include the comedy of manners, The Personals (徵婚啟事), starring Rene Liu, and the action adventure Treasure Island (只要為你活一天). In Double Vision he will be cooperating with up-and-coming scriptwriter Su Chao-ping (蘇照彬), who was nominated for a Golden Horse award for his debut script The Cabbie (運轉手之戀) last year.

Double Vision has also recruited a host of other high-profile international filmmaking professionals, including art director Tim Yip (葉錦添), who just received an Oscar for his work on Crouching Tiger. Peter Weeb, computer graphics expert from Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo and Juliet and MEG, the special make-up crew for Matrix, will also be brought into the project. The film is expected to complete shooting at the end of May.