It is probably appropriate to applaud the fact that Formosa Betrayed has been given a Taiwan release, but virtually everything else about the film can only make one shake one’s head. Causes for despair range from accusations of political pressure brought to bear on the production of the film, already given coverage recently in the Taipei Times (see stories on Page 3 of this newspaper’s July 31 and Aug. 2 editions), to the lamentable quality of the adaptation and filmmaking.
It is only fair to say that many, though far from all, of the problems in Formosa Betrayed can be attributed to the fact that it had to be shot in Thailand rather than Taiwan because of budget constraints that purportedly were the result of political pressure brought to bear by several members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which is unsympathetically represented in the film.
Formosa Betrayed is loosely inspired by the book of the same title published in 1965 by George H. Kerr, a US Foreign Service staff officer in Taipei at the time of the 228 Incident in 1947. The book is a mixture of history and memoir that examines the events around the retrocession of Taiwan to Chinese rule and America’s not altogether honorable role in the process. The betrayal of the title refers not just to the dashing of hopes raised by the prospect of Taiwan being returned from Japanese colonial rule to administration by a Chinese government, but also the support given to a dictatorial regime by Washington, which ignored the democratic aspirations of the Taiwanese people for its own geopolitical interests. This provides background in the same way as Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone provides background for the Paul Greengrass action thriller Green Zone. In other words, it uses the book as little more than a bit of topical color.
Formosa Betrayed tells the story of Special Agent Kelly (James Van Der Beek), a junior officer with the FBI who gets sent to Taiwan to observe an investigation into the murder of Henry Wen, an outspoken critic of the KMT government who was assassinated while in exile in the US. Kelly quickly realizes that attempts to smear Wen as a triad member caught up in a gangland dispute are merely cover for a wide-ranging campaign of political terror by the KMT to silence anti-government elements. He decides to take things into his own hands, bucking the reigns that both his hosts and his superiors in the US try to put on him in order to bring the truth to light. He finds an ally in Ming (Will Tiao), who wants to get Taiwan’s message out to the world, and pays a terrible price.
Unfortunately, director Adam Kane is no Greengrass, and James Van Der Beek is no match for Matt Damon as an action hero, and the result is a plodding attempt at a political thriller that spends too much time on expository dialogue and fails to deliver any thrills. In addition to being shot in Thailand, the film uses no Taiwanese actors in any major role (Will Tiao is Taiwanese American and was born and raised in Kansas). This gives the film an utterly ersatz feel from the get-go, for the setting is manifestly not Taipei (and could not mistaken for it by anyone familiar with Taiwan even given the time lapse of 50 years). The facade is further compromised by the use of Chinese dialogue, as when Hong Kong-born US-based actor Tzi Ma, playing the role of a senior government official, gives a formal welcome speech at an official banquet for the newly arrived American agent in Mandarin so stilted that it would not be out of place in a speech contest for beginner students at National Taiwan Normal University’s Mandarin Training Center. The rest of the Chinese dialogue is of a piece with this. Although setting and sound might be secondary to the importance of getting a political message out to a wider audience, the poor quality of both seriously undermines the credibility of the film.
As for the political message, even that ends up getting hopelessly garbled, and director Kane gets caught up in the lockstep of the Hollywood mainstream thriller format. The complex ethnic and political issues surrounding Retrocession get reduced to a generic conflict of good, ordinary people turning against a corrupt and despotic power, and the lone man of conscience appalled by the self-interest of the government he serves. There is nothing here that stands out, either in the story or in the characters involved. The indifferent acting and flaccid dialogue don’t help.
The sad fact is that to get an idea about what was happening in Taiwan around Retrocession and the 228 Incident, there is still no rival for Hou Hsiao-hsien’s (侯孝賢) A City of Sadness (悲情城市), which was made way back in 1989. The best that can be said of Formosa Betrayed is that it might direct a few people to read the book, which is available online at www.romanization.com/books/formosabetrayed. Save your money and go online.
Last week saw a momentary spark in the election season, when Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and Taiwan People’s Party Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) attempted to form a joint ticket, ostensibly to defeat the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its candidate Vice President William Lai (賴清德). This mating of massive egos was arranged by longtime KMT stalwart and former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The deal predictably fell apart, though as of this writing — Thursday — there was still a chance for an 11th hour recovery. (Editor’s note: it didn’t happen.) Many people
For decades in the 20th century, trains running on narrow-gauge track ran up and down the plains of rural Taiwan, taking one of the most important cash crops, sugarcane, to factories for processing. Schoolchildren in many places relied on these trains to get to and from school. This separate rail network grew to nearly 3,000km in length, and even came to include regular passenger service serving much of western Taiwan, with over 40 different lines. With the changing global market, however, Taiwanese sugar production has now nearly ceased. The tracks that haven’t already been ripped out sit rusting or half-buried
Australia doesn’t exist. That’s at least according to Bing search results for some users on Wednesday when the Microsoft search engine cited long-running Internet conspiracy theories denying the existence of the country. Several very real Australian users on Bluesky and Mastodon reported that when they searched for “does Australia exist” on Bing, it would come back with an emphatic “No” written in a text box before the link results. “Bing is denying the existence of Australia,” the technology reporter Stilgherrian posted on Bluesky on Wednesday. One user replied: “It’s buying into conspiracy theories.” Another asked: “Does that mean I don’t have to pay
Lesley Hughes says most climate change scientists are good at partitioning off bits of their brain. “You put all the negative stuff in a little box and you put a wall around it and you try to keep going,” she says. But in the record-breaking year that 2023 has become, some of the dread and grief has broken out of Hughes’s mental box and vaulted the wall. There have been sleepless nights, where she’s pondered the future for her family, the natural places she loves and for the species being lost. “I do grieve,” the ecologist says at her home on Sydney’s lower north
RSS