I saw this movie a few years ago and was very disappointed, despite the relatively big budget, intriguing premise and good cast. Just rewatched it the other day mainly because I wanted to check out the commentary track by Gordon Chan and Stephen Hammond on the Taiseng Special Edition DVD.

Well, the movie is still as bad as I remembered. It's a convuluted, slow-moving mishmash of creepy unexplained phenomena a la X-Files, religious superstitions about the end of the world versus reason/science in general and information technology in particular, and lastly a variation on the Chinese Ghost movie genre, all thrown together in a confusing and haphazard manner. Andy Lau stars as brilliant young scientist whose life seems threatened when all of a sudden scientists all over the worls die under mysterious circumstances. Together with his police pal played by Anthony Wong, they start investigating and soon are confronted by apocalyptic prophesies about the end of the world. And Andy's fiancee (played by Michelle Reis), who was killed in an accident a few months before, suddenly begins reappearing. Is she a ghost? Will the world come to an end? Would I have cared more if they had had a bigger special effects budget?

The movie is well-intentioned, but can't help the fact that for most of the film you see the cast sitting around giving exposition and lecturing the audience about anything from Nostradamus to Revelations. It gets even funnier when they show the supposed revolutionary new technologies Andy's character is working on. Shot in 96, the film harkens back to the days when the concept of the information superhighway had not yet been replaced by the new economy model and the internet revolution in the public's mind, and consequently, all the film can come up with is - an improved form of television! Well, they also manage to annoy anyone who has any understanding about technology: What is obviously digital switches at a Telco company is being presented as a server farm (and you have the mandatory bespectacled assistant guiding Anthony as the audience proxy through the whole set up and uttering the magical word that always pops up in movie treatments of computers - "firewall").

The actors struggle to keep things interesting. Michelle looks gorgeous as always, and Andy Lau for once doesn't take off his shirt. Some scenes were shot in Prague and are visually interesting, but the pieces never come together to form a convincing whole, and the overblown ending borders on the ludicrous.

With all the fears about the handover, this was a timely topic, and could have made for an interesting movie. Instead you have a movie that doesn't quite know what it wants to be and consequently shifts tone several times throughout the story. Gordon Chan should stick to doing genre movies like his SDU films...

The DVD commentary track, as mentioned earlier, was the real reason I rewatched this film. I had high expectations, given Stephen Hammond's witty humour, but alas, I was let down. For the most part, they simply introduce actors ("now we see Andy Lau, he's real famous in HK, and he starred in many movies"). Whenever Stephen runs out of things to say (which is often), he resorts to asking Gordon Chan pointless questions ("now the scene we're looking at - did you shoot that on a soundstage?"). I found it utterly boring, just like the movie itself. It puzzles me why Taiseng would give a forgettable movie like this a Special Edition treatment...

Not recommended.