Ming Ming (2006)

It is a performances centric movie

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This should really be called Nana (instead of Ming Ming) because that's the name of the other of the two characters Zhou Xun plays; the one who has the orange hair, quite a bit more screen time, and a better story line if you could separate them. This is NOT a martial arts film unless you consider flinging marbles and flicking matches at people martial arts. I thought it was silly. Director Susie Au obviously comes from a music video background. I found the random quick and quirky edits tiring, although they did set up the actors with wonderfully posed portraits throughout. Daniel Wu has an awesome hairdo if you go for that kind of thing. Zhou Xun's Cantonese is quite fetching and ordinarily I could watch her all day long. She's one of the more engaging actresses from China. (See her in "The Equation of Love and Death" or "Painted Skin") It's too bad that the director's heavy-handed style gets in the way of enjoying this film where identity as an ambiguous thing is decently explored.

As another reviewer noted, this is not really a martial arts film at all. It's a romance and a study of obsession. The plot details are subtle, but by the end of the movie, things become clear in a very satisfying way.Visually, this movie has some very creative cinematography that is quite captivating, and very revealing of character. The acting is very good, especially the roles of Nana and Tu.The "fight" scenes, and the whole handling of Ming Ming's fighting powers, is the weakest part of the movie. If you sit back, though, and view these scenes as being magical realism, you can enjoy the visuals and the characters and the plot.I enjoyed the movie the first time through for the visuals and the characters. It then immediately watched it a second time, and really enjoyed the plot, which made a lot more sense the second time around.

Getting a veteran of movie videos and commercials to direct a feature film is invariably a risky proposition. The results can shine or literally suck, and the last thing any sophisticated audience needs these days is another jittery, two hour-long mishmashed affair that looks like a Taiwan pop music video from hell taken to an extreme.With Susie Au, a first-time movie helmswoman with a resume full of pop productions, that scenario was all too likely to become reality. In fact, her directorial debut Ming Ming seems to have reached a compromise in this respect. Its first twenty minutes are so painfully nonsensical and over stylized you can't help but cringe in anger, yet after those initial phases of ridiculous OTT poppiness blow over, the project reveals itself as quite enjoyable.Get past the obvious attempt to rekindle interest in Kill Bill's Hong Kong heritage through transparent "references", and beneath lurks a passably interesting escapade.On the upside, Ming Ming delivers characters that surprise with their ability to grow and evolve over the course of a relatively short, and frequently very vacuous, release. Heading the cast is Zhou Xun, who fittingly enough plays two separate and identical looking protagonists. Ms. Zhou has displayed a mixed bag of performances in the past, shining in Where Have All the Flowers Gone and Beijing Bicycle, but irritating with exaggerated acting in films like Suzhou River.In Ming Ming, she's both. As the titular character, Zhou does a vaguely Trinity-meets-The Bride, disaffected assassin that puts a whole new spin on beads and rosaries. Instead of guns, she launches marbles at her adversaries, cutting a swath of destruction through the henchmen of arch mobster Brother Cat (Jeff Chang). This happens after Ming Ming purloins a sum of money from the gangland boss, funds to be used in financing a new life for her with sulking hunk Ah D. The latter, a fist-fighting mob enforcer, is conveyed by Daniel Wu in a thoroughly disappointing part. We've gotten used to seeing quality and sincerity from Daniel, and in Ming Ming he just doesn't have those virtues on display.Back to the story. Oddball luck brings together wide-eyed triad lackey Ah Tu (Tony Yang) and Ming Ming twin Nana as the money gets misplaced, changing hands and ending up with these two apparently totally unrelated individuals.On the run, Nana and Ah Tu take over the movie and show it does have merit. Both Zhou Xun and Tony Yang proceed to deliver very respectable performances, showcased by way of dialog and mood-setting scenes on the way to and around Shanghai.Yang impresses as innocent, loyal and loving Ah Tu, certainly adding to the young actor's portfolio. Zhou Xun truly dazzles those in attendance as the genuine Nana, a character doing the actress far greater justice than the cardboard cutout silhouette that is Ming Ming. And who knew Ms. Zhou is so fluent in Cantonese? Yes, language plays an important part in Ming Ming, and for that we salute the production team. Cantonese, Putonghua and Shanghainese all find room herein, that last one to a large degree from the sensuous mouth of long gone but never forgotten lovely Kristy Yang, a Shanghai native herself. Yes, she has returned! Although a small cameo, it's still awesome to have her around again.Ming Ming further contains some highly enjoyable music, and is generally well-produced. Those frenzied opening sequences we could have easily dispensed with, but in the end an Armageddon-like debacle is averted just in time for a bona fide twist ending that, for a change, puts the various plot pieces together with grace rather than rushed clumsiness.This isn't the new benchmark for indie cinema, but it gets the job done and should be viewed by all appreciators and supporters of film-making in Asia and movies in general. It's also proof positive that first impressions can be deceiving, so please, don't despair, stick with it and you will be rewarded.Rating: * * * 1/2

This is the sort of movie where style is king (or queen, if you like). While as a possible genre, "style" is a rather elusive concept, one can easily bring to mind movies that are, though not entirely comparable, similar in distinguishing themselves with style. Two examples that come immediately to mind are "Miranda" (2002) and "Pisutore opera" (2001).On this premise, Ming Ming is indeed nice to watch, so much so that you almost want to forgive its ridiculously far-fetched "plot twist". But isn't there even a plot to begin with? It's almost as if the director has watched so many movies recently that an urge becomes irresistible, an urge, that is, to throw everything she has seen from these movies into a mixer, and churn out a movie of her own.For melodramatic elements, you have identity confusion of look-alikes, cliché gangster routines, childhood secret, devoted-boy-helping-girl-to-chase-another-guy, girls head-over-heel with the crash for a sexy male, city hopping and many other plot elements you recognize. Unfortunately, they do not add up to an integrated plot in this movie.For more specific borrowed elements, you have a boxing sequence from "Ong-bak" (2003), a voyage from "Invisible waves" (2006), the "Matrix 2" (2003) fighting scene (slight variation in having all the Hugo Weavings as different persons here), just to give a few examples. The camera work is quite dazzling but there's nothing that you have not seen somewhere else. And, as mentioned, there must be suspense and a twist, which in this movie is a motif in the form of a mystifying box and its tantalizing content. This turns out to be so brainless that it's almost comical.On the plus side, style comes not only visually but also with music, from fabulous Anthony Wong Yiu-ming and his fabulous "People mountain people sea" gang. Zhou Xun gets a chance to look both super-cool and super-cute because she is playing two characters*. Daniel Wu is deliciously sexy. It's good to see Kristy Yang Kung-yu in a cameo role. Casting of top Taiwanese pop star Zhang Xin-zhe as the gangster boss is a little weird but there is reason in the madness.* During Q&A in the Hong Kong International Film Festive premier I attended, one individual who might have been sleeping through most of the movie, asked Zhou Xun how she felt about playing three characters. Her response brought about a round of applause from the rest of the audience, "May I suggest that you watch the movie one more time", she said. "I only played two," she added.