To borrow an expression from the American's game of baseball, Soi Cheang's Home Sweet Home is a swing and a miss. After a string of popular films from Diamond Hill [2000] to Love Battlefield [2004], Cheang falters with a project in a genre that he's been quite proficient and successful. The problem with this film is that the director only has about 45 or 50 minutes of good material that he has to stretch out with tedious footage of victims and protagonists chasing each other thru a bunch of high-rise apartment ventilation shafts.

The film starts off well enough and manages to hold this viewer's interest until about the time that Alex Fong Chung-Sun makes his exit from the scenario for an extended stay in the hospital. Once that happens, it is time for the fast forward button on your DVD remote. The political and socio-economic back story that this movie is built on gives this film some subversive subtexts that are easy and fun to read.