Following the unprecedented triumph of 2008’s Cape No. 7 (海角七號), there has been no shortage of movies taking their cue from Taiwanese culture and grassroots life. Many, such as Night Market Hero (雞排英雄) and Seven Days in Heaven (父後七日), have been box-office successes. In the same vein, The Spin Kid (電哪吒) enlists help from local deities and young ravers to tell the story of a difficult father-son relationship. The debut feature by Joe Lee (李運傑) also boasts two key men from the blockbuster Night Market Hero: leading man Blue Lan (藍正龍) and Yeh Tien-lun (葉天倫), who switches his role from director to actor.
Lan plays A-hao, an aspiring young DJ raised by his grandfather after his mother passed away. Growing up in a temple, A-hao takes part in “eight generals” (八家將) folk performances at religious events and spins discs in his spare time. Things take a bad turn when an outing with his childhood friend Monkey (Ni Tzu-chun, 倪子鈞, better known as Hsiao Ma, 小馬) deteriorates into a drug deal gone sour. Monkey escapes, but A-hao becomes the subject of a police pursuit led by officer A-lang — veteran actor Chang Chia-nien (張嘉年, aka Tai Pao, 太保) — who happens to be the young man’s estranged father.
Injured, A-hao is rescued by Hsiao Ying (Nikki Hsieh, 謝欣穎), a sassy young lady deejaying at a popular club. Needless to say, love buds, and before long A-hao’s spinning talent catches the attention of club owner Brother Pao, played by Yeh, who offers the lad a long-awaited opportunity to spin in front of a big crowd. On what could be his breakthrough night at the bar, A-hao runs into A-lang and decides it is time to set the proverbial record straight.
Photo courtesy of Applause Entertainment
Billed as the first local production to explore the country’s rave culture, the movie builds a promising prologue in the first 30 minutes, but the director’s lack of storytelling skills soon becomes apparent.
One of the movie’s biggest problems is that it wants to be too many things at once. Is it a gangster flick filled with gunshots and murders? A motivational story about a street punk who finds faith in love and music? Or more interestingly, does the film offer a reading on the motif of father-son conflict, as the grandfather suggests when he compares A-hao and A-lang’s relationship to the tragic Chinese myth about the deity Nezha (哪吒) and his father Li Jing (李靖)?
Director Lee has too much on his hands and tries to thread all the elements together with half-developed plots and feeble characters. The end result is a messy first effort that lets its ambition run amok.
Photo courtesy of Applause Entertainment
Photo courtesy of Applause Entertainment
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