Director says film marks start of new epoch for Taiwan

After finishing a strenuous 40-day shoot yesterday, Columbia Pictures brought the cast and crew of its new film Double Vision (雙瞳) together to announce what they called "a new era in Taiwanese film."

Director Chen Kuo-fu (陳國富) said that the investment from Columbia "created a new potential for Taiwan's film industry."

But while Double Vision has benefited from the hype given to Columbia's other Asian venture Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍), Barbara Robinson, director of Columbia Asia, said the project wasn't a result of that film's success. "Double Vision was already in the planning stages before Crouching Tiger was released," she said.

Double Vision, set in Taipei, is a thriller about a serial killer and an FBI agent from the US who finds himself in unfamiliar surroundings. The FBI agent is played by David Morse, veteran of box office hits such as The Negotiator, The Rock, 12 Monkeys and The Long Kiss Goodnight.

Chen said that the challenge of the film was to make the thriller format work "in its own terms," suggesting that other Asian films that have tried to adopt this genre have failed because they have been "neither eastern nor western."

Although Chen agreed that Taipei does not really have "US-style serial killers," he said that Double Vision is "an expression of the anxiety caused by living in Taiwan."