The question is not whether this movie makes any sense or not — it is whether Go! Crazy Gangster even warrants any form of serious analysis or discussion.
Nothing really ever falls into place in this film, which features an eternal benchwarmer on a terrible professional basketball team (Alien Huang, 黃鴻昇) who, after being hit in the buttocks by a meteorite inexplicably triggered by some dude in a suit on another planet dropping his cell phone (at least that’s what seems to have transpired but don’t take our word for it), gets summoned onto the court for the first time in eons and hits the game winning shot.
By the way, despite the movie’s title, he’s not a gangster at all. He just dresses like one.
Photo courtesy of Activator Marketing Company
Anyway, after that he is inexplicably seduced by his future love interest (Cyndi Wang, 王心凌) and then hired by her gangster father (Liao Chun, 廖峻), who conveniently happens to run a girls’ high school, to be its basketball coach. The problem is the team is made up of delinquents who also happen to have extraordinary fighting, ninja and hacking skills and what not and will not accept their new master without a fight.
If the above synopsis seems confusing, that’s because it really is.
The filmmakers seem to attempt to divert attention from the incomprehensible, half-baked plot and lack of any convincing tension or conflict with exaggerated acting, lame special effects, video game-esque gimmicks and sappy sob fest after sob fest that you can’t stop cringing in your seat while wondering why the characters have not drowned in their tears (or snot) yet.
Because of this over-the-top acting, extremely corny dialogue and utter lack of any depth or plausibility to this story, the characters come off as being more cartoonish, unrealistic and completely unrelatable to. It is hard to root for anybody in this film. Wang probably comes off as the most sympathetic because she actually has a backstory and her performance is slightly more toned down than the others (except when she consumes alcohol — but the film also fails to capitalize on this characteristic).
After a while, you start wondering who the target audience is. The plot, dialogue, acting and stylistic choices are reminiscent of a children’s cartoon, but there’s adult material (many not-so-subtle references to male sexual arousal) and lots of drinking and smoking. The main cast is made up mostly of current or former teen idols, with Ye Fu-tai (葉富台, the “Dancing Grandpa” of YouTube fame) providing comic relief.
The simple lack of attention to detail in favor of glitz is evident in the casting of Dean Fujioka, most likely simply for the reason that he appeared in one of Wang’s music videos when he was based in Taiwan several years ago. This results in an American-educated Taiwanese character speaking Mandarin in an inexplicable Japanese accent, and even though other characters make fun of him for being a “banana,” his English is pretty atrocious.
Gender roles are interesting here — there’s quite a bit of crossdressing, and the women are the strong and aggressive ones in the film while most of the men, including the protagonist, are weak-willed. Huang’s character has to be constantly snapped out of his sob-filled self-loathing episodes by Wang’s, who, really is the hero of the movie.
Anyway, there’s no need to take this film so seriously. It is supposed to be another one of those formulaic, goofy, Japanese-manga inspired feel-good laugh-fests — but the problem is that it just isn’t very funny, and the “never give up and you can achieve anything” message is so overused that people should be concerned that it might start having the opposite effect on today’s youth.
If you do decide to go see this film, for whatever reason, don’t worry if you’re confused throughout most of the film. The filmmakers are obviously aware of how ridiculously little sense the first 100 minutes make, as they throw in one of the laziest twist endings in filmmaking history to tie up the innumerable loose ends.
Curious now? Of course we’re not giving away the ending here. It is something you have to suffer through the entire movie to earn. And here’s a hint: it’s not worth your time.
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