An enduring staple of Hong Kong cinema, the testosterone-charged gangster flick has inspired distinctive styles and narrative forms. Under the guise of a triad movie, Run Papa Run (一個好爸爸) sees veteran Taiwanese actress and director Sylvia Chang’s (張艾嘉) take a womanly look at this male-dominated genre, revealing the tough guy’s rarely seen family side through lighthearted drama and comedy and stars the well-cast Louis Koo (古天樂) and Rene Liu (劉若英).
The film begins with a flashback to triad boss Lee’s (played by Koo) childhood in a crime-ridden neighborhood. Raised by a single mother, Lee was always on the wrong side of the law and rose from street punk to gang leader.
This bad boy meets an angelic lawyer named Mabel (played by Liu). Sparks fly, and Mabel shows up on Lee’s doorstep one day, pregnant, luggage in tow.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF ARM FILMS
Lee’s life is turned upside down after their baby girl is born. Determined to be a good father, Lee keeps his underworld identity a secret to his daughter, while attempting to make his business legit and retire from the gang.
But things don’t go as smoothly as the Lee family had expected as the father is tapped to become the next kingpin. Lee’s first assignment as the leader is to oversee a drug deal, one that goes unexpectedly wrong.
Entertaining and well-realized, Run Papa Run shows director Chang’s competence in storytelling, with seamless editing punctuated by manga-informed graphics and special effects. As the protagonist passes from one chapter of his life to another, the film undergoes a shift of tone, from whimsical musical scenes in the beginning to a latter half that plays out like a soap opera. The final scene, where a gray-haired Koo prays in a church, however, brings the film’s uneven tone to the fore and leaves audiences hanging.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF ARM FILMS
Most of the film’s humor comes from Lee’s attempt to maintain his double life as a father and a triad boss and hide his criminal affiliations from his daughter. Cute moments abound both in Lee and Mabel’s romance and between the dad and his baby girl. The stylish cinematography uses a palette of bright and saturated colors, and the story is engaging. Unfortunately, however, it remains true to the stereotypical gender roles of the gangster genre, where men are wild and untamed while the women are virtuous.
Known for his onscreen gangster image, Koo makes a smooth foray into the father role and shows off his comedic talent. One of Chang’s principal actresses, Liu effortlessly tackles the role of devoted wife with fairytale-like innocence.
The rare return of veteran actors to the silver screen further boosts the film’s watchability. The performances by seasoned actress Nora Miao (苗可秀) and accomplished thespians Mok Siu-chung (莫少聰) and Kent Cheng (鄭則仕) delight and conjure up memories of the good old days of Hong Kong cinema.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF ARM FILMS
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
RSS