Reviewed by: Hyomil Date: 01/03/2011 Summary: Thin Accident's trailer gives a promising setup of a thriller focused on a team of assassins who make their killings look like accidents, but there's no follow through. Thrilling this is not, especially when you start to get into the grind of just how many niggling details have to be accounted for to make a death believable as an accident and how many things have to come together in the right way and at the right time or the whole thing has to be called off and back to the drawing board. The movie might at least be intellectually interesting, but nothing is particularly believable or smart (the film is only capable of telling us Louis Koo's character is a genius rather than showing us) and there's minimal plot, dialog, or character interaction. Questions that should be asked aren't. Questions that no one really cares about are lingered on too long. Louis Koo plays the main character, Brain, dominating the screen time, and the disappearance of each of the other capable actors, none of whom are around for long, is keenly felt. I've seen Koo give some fine performances, but here he must spend most of the movie alone and silent, with no one to play off of, which is a tall order for any actor, even if they have a stellar script, which Accident most certainly does not. The silence also conveniently leaves out the need for the film to flesh out Brain's theories and what he's thinking and we're just left to guess--perhaps the director thought this would be a clever style because it would put the audience in the same mindset as the main character, but it just put me in the mindset of wanting to go to sleep. With the main character being a stony hired killer, there's no one to root for, and it doesn't take too many lingering shots of Brain furrowing his brow to convey the wheels of his genius brain are turning while conducting surveillance of mundane events until you stop caring. Slogging through to the ending adds little, so you might as well just move on when the boredom gets intense. There's really not any "twist" at the end that redeems things, as some reviewers try to make out; I don't know if the film's creators really even intended there to be. If you're "blown away" by the ending, either you haven't seen many movies of this sort, or you should probably consider yourself pretty thick. Accident is just another triumph of atmosphere over substance that relies on cheap tricks to bypass viewers' ability to think critically about the weaknesses of the script by implying things that never materialize and various other manipulations that leave you feeling used at the end when it becomes apparent that the things you had to forgive in the hope that this was leading somewhere have led nowhere worth going. Overheard (2009), also with Koo (and Ching Wan Lau and Daniel Wu), comes to mind as an example of a better surveillance-themed movie. Reviewer Score: 5

Reviewed by: dandan Date: 08/12/2010 Summary: accident injury specialists... ho (louis koo) leads a team of assassins (the others being michelle ye, stanley fung and lam suet). they're not a standard bunch of assassins though; instead they construct and execute elaborate plans which result in their targets being dispatched in what seems like nothing more than accidents. still, if you spend your life constructing accidents, when you get caught up in one yourself, you begin to question if it really was an accident... another highly entertaining film from the milkyway image stable, who seem to be in a rude vein of form these days. soi cheang pou-soi crafts a very watchable, yet nicely understated, thriller that focusses on the anguish louis koo's character goes through as he delves deeply into the circumstances surrounding an accident which his team were caught up in. another fine performance from koo, who almost always impresses, with the special treat of stanley fung, providing solid support. after seeing john shum cropping up in a tiny role in 'bodyguards and assassins', surely it's only a matter of time before richard ng crops up in hong kong again. good stuff...

Reviewed by: mrblue Date: 12/29/2009 With recent entries like Dog Bite Dog and Shamo, Soi Cheang has established himself as one of the directors to keep an eye on in Hong Kong, and his latest release Accident continues that trend. Produced by Johnnie To, this film will definitely fit the bill if you're in the mood for a stylish crime thriller. Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: Beat TG Date: 11/13/2009 Summary: Milkyway Image at its' most creative! This was freaking creative beginning to end (minus the forced ending)! Here, the makers decided to bring in the themes of death, fate, tragedy, scheme and mystery and worked them into a story about a group of hitters arranging hits by pre-situating them through objects around their environment, and timing their pro skills to set the hits off on the right occasions and with such precision that no one around the environment can conclude them as murders but just as coincidental accidents. Truly breath-taking and refreshing! The cast was just what the movie needed to make ACCIDENT what it is; deep and compelling. We have Louis Koo (in probably his best acting performance as of now, and someone I don't care about much otherwise) as the quiet, paranoid leader of the bunch, Stanley Fung (good to see him again) as a incautious and mentally ill member, Michelle Ye as a member who's loyal and cautious opposed to Stanley Fung's character, Lam Suet's neutral and carious member, and lastly Richie Ren's innocent but yet highly suspicious character of an insurance agent, and they are all acting-driven with such snap and intensity that they make their acting appreciating and memorable as they sell their characters. As for the story, as expected with Johnnie To productions, it's very simplistic but yet it's filled with so much puzzles and clues that you're left running your head thinking alot, which on the other hand is what makes these movies very entertaining to watch. The accident-arrangements goes into quite a bit of detail and from there they become more complicated leads to all kinds of emotions and events that finally reaches its climax and resolves everything in the most unexpected way imaginable. A work of art! Reviewer Score: 9