What happens when you have a merciless but superstitious gang leader, a group of religious fanatics and a street-smart gambling addict, who, in order to run away from debt collectors, makes up up a series of lies and jokes?
Normally, such elements might make for a decent black comedy story. But in the case of Comes the Black Dog (黑狗來了), the movie looks as if it has been made so hurriedly that it has killed off most of the good comedy.
Black Dog (Tsai Cheng-nan (蔡振南) is dumb gangster leader who is chasing Jih (Tai-bao (太保)) for a gambling debt. Jih makes up a story that he needs money for his father's funeral and Black Dog fall for it because Jih's father Da-de (Lee Bin-hui (李炳輝)) was a good friend and benefactor who once saved Black Dog's life.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CMPC
As a result of this situation, Jih has to make bigger lies just to keep Black Dog off his back. He even hires Taoist monks for the "funeral."
He also quickly sends his blind father to his younger brother Lih (Chen Mu-yi (陳慕義)) in the countryside, who is a policeman, but dreams of becoming a Taoist cult leader and owning his own temple. Lih's wife Bao-ju (Lin Mei-hsiu (林美秀)) owns a cheesy dance troupe that performs pole dances at local bars and funerals.
The film mocks contemporary Taiwanese lifestyles, such as local gangster culture, entertainers, Taoist freaks and their rituals, and betelnut girls. These images may serve to add color to the story, but in general they are not very funny and look cliched.
Among the actors, Jih is the most convincing and Tai-bao does well playing a habitual liar and irresponsible husband. Lin Mei-hsiu, who won a Golden Horse for Best Supporting Actress, is reasonably good as the non-stop nagger and her lines (in Taiwanese) are quite funny.
The biggest problem is that there are too many other storylines and none of them are handled particularly well. As a result, no-one actually cares happens what happens when Black Dog attends the absurd fake funeral.
June 23 to June 29 After capturing the walled city of Hsinchu on June 22, 1895, the Japanese hoped to quickly push south and seize control of Taiwan’s entire west coast — but their advance was stalled for more than a month. Not only did local Hakka fighters continue to cause them headaches, resistance forces even attempted to retake the city three times. “We had planned to occupy Anping (Tainan) and Takao (Kaohsiung) as soon as possible, but ever since we took Hsinchu, nearby bandits proclaiming to be ‘righteous people’ (義民) have been destroying train tracks and electrical cables, and gathering in villages
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
This year will go down in the history books. Taiwan faces enormous turmoil and uncertainty in the coming months. Which political parties are in a good position to handle big changes? All of the main parties are beset with challenges. Taking stock, this column examined the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) (“Huang Kuo-chang’s choking the life out of the TPP,” May 28, page 12), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) (“Challenges amid choppy waters for the DPP,” June 14, page 12) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (“KMT struggles to seize opportunities as ‘interesting times’ loom,” June 20, page 11). Times like these can
Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week’s air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former US intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world’s deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend