Divergence (2005)
Reviewed by: mrblue on 2005-07-01
Benny Chan's Divergence marks something of an abnormality for me. Normally, I'm not a big fan of either Aaron Kwok or Ekin Cheng, but when you put them in a movie together, the results are usually solid, such as The Storm Riders. Divergence is perhaps a bit too ambitious for its' own good, but it's an entertaining enough picture that both Kwok and Cheng fanboys, as well as more "serious" film buffs, should enjoy.

The plot is a little hard to explain without spoling the movie, but I'll try my best here. Aaron Kwok plays a cop named Suen, who has been depressed since his girlfriend Fong (Angelica Lee) disappeared ten years ago. While transporting an informant to the station, a sniper named Coke (Daniel Wu) takes out the informant, who was supposed to testify against a crooked businessman, Chung (played by Gallen Lo). Chung's lawyer To (Ekin Cheng, who cut his hair and donned glasses to, I suppose, look smarter) heads to court to unfreeze Ching's assets, so Chung can pay off his debts. Even after he is kicked off the force after a bothced attempt to capture Coke, Suen is still obsessed with arresting Chung, and takes to shadowing To in order to dig up evidence. Shockingly, To's wife looks exactly like Fong, and so Suen's obsession kicks into overdrive, which leads to a series of confrontations with both his enemies as well as the demons in his past.

When you add in subplots about a guy going around strangling people with wire, Chung's missing son, Coke's dealings (and double-crosses) with his "agent" (Ning Jing), and Suen's psuedo-father-son relationship with the head of the missing persons bureau (Eric Tsang), things get more than a bit complicated, and that's Divergence's main problem. While I admire a film in this day and age of dwindling output from Hong Kong and more reliance on simpler audience-friendly fare to get the patrons in the seats, it feels like the film-makers tried to squish three hours of content into ninety minutes. Perhaps it was because screenwriter Ivy Ho is better known for her more dramatic work like Comrades: Almost a Love Story and Benny Chan is a much more "commerical" director, with projects like Gen-X Cops under his belt. Divergence just never seems to fully know its' way -- is it a character-driven police flick, or a bullets-and-blood-filled shootout picture?

Each part of the equation is actually done well; it's just that they never seem to fully mesh together. For instance, it was very easy to buy Aaron Kwok in the action scenes. Of particular note is a brawl he has with Daniel Wu, which, outside of Jet Li's Danny the Dog (aka Unleashed), marks some of the best on-screen fighting I've seen this year. But, man, this guy really cannot act. I could tolerate him in the quieter scenes where he's supposed to be sullen, but in later scenes where he is supposed to come off as emotional, it looks like he's trying to pass a kidney stone, instead of being sad for the love he has lost. Kwok's performance is a good analogy for the film as a whole -- there are parts that represent some of the best Hong Kong cinema has to offer, but there are some others which remind the viewer of exactly why Hong Kong movie studios are only putting out about one-fourth of the productions that they did back in the "golden age" of the late 1980's to the early 1990's.

Despite the schizophrenic nature of Divergence, I still enjoyed it. Like I said before, the good parts are very good. Besides the Kwok/Wu fight, there is a solid shootout near the end of the film, so I think action fans will be satisfied here. On the dramatic side, Daniel Wu puts in an excellent performance. That statement might surprise some people, but keep in mind that Wu won a Hong Kong Film Award with his performance in last year's Jackie Chan "comeback" picture, New Police Story, which was directed by Benny Chan -- though, personally, I thought Wu did a better job in Derek Yee's excellent One Nite in Mongkok, and his work for New Police Story was selected more for that movie's success at the box office and the simple fact that it was a Jackie Chan film. A Jackie Chan movie not winning a few Hong Kong Film Awards is like me scoring a hat trick in game seven of the Stanley Cup finals -- it ain't gonna happen.

At any rate, a lot of people don't like Daniel Wu's work, due to his "pretty boy" looks and mis-handling of Cantonese at times, but he is one of the few young actors that has steadily improved, at least in my book. Sure, Wu's has had his share of clunkers, but it never feels like he just memorized his lines ten minutes before he started shooting because he was too busy making a commerical for Ex-Lax or Pocki sticks or breast cream or whatever the hell else most Hong Kong stars will slap their names on to pay the bills these days. Wu actually seems to like gettng into his roles, and fire like that is where I would like to see the future of acting in Hong Kong movies going towards, rather than companies like EEG planting every new pop star in a movie just to use publicity to cash in for a quick buck. And it is really on the strength of Daniel Wu's performance, along with some tight action and a story that's a step above your usual Hong Kong crime picture, that I recommend Divergence. While it might not be saying too much in this time of box-office stiffs and critical failures like Where is Mama's Boy, Divergence is the best Hong Kong film I've seen so far this year.

[review from www.hkfilm.net]