What'll you think about when you know the movie 'Lord of Hangzhou'? First, you know the cast of TZE Kwan-ho, who has won his Golden Horse Award last year with his 'Madness of the Phoneix, The'. Second, you'll think about it's related to KO Chi-sum. Yeap, there's a little relationship as it's produced by KO. However, the director changes to CHIN Wing-keung for it's 01:00am series.

The story starts with a billionaire's son MEI Chi (TZE Kwan-ho) who has lost all his money as being cheated by baddies in Qing Dynasty. He lose everything and he wants to go to Beijing to find his friend KAM for help with MEI Ang. However, they don't know that KAM is the Majestry. On the other hand, the way for them to go to beijing from Hangzhou is quite long while they have no money. It makes the whole journey hard.

When you first take a look to the production, you'll probably guess that it's a PRC production. In fact, it seems to be while we expect that the diaglogues should be in Mandarin. However, the showing version in Hong Kong is in Cantonese which makes it hard. It's hard no only because you feel that the mouths of the performers do not match but also the diaglogues is hard to get along with. Maybe it would be better to have it in Mandarin.

Back to the issue of the movie, it seems that they want to make the movie full of contents. Basically you can clearly divide the story into four. The first is how MEI spend his money without thinking twice. The second is how MEI Chi is broken up. The third part is how they go to beijing to meet the princess and majestry. The last part is how they do when they have their new identity as Lord of Hangzhou.

To me, I consider the whole script is complete but they can make it a bit better. The good part is that they put enough contents with a bit of surprise to make audience feel a bit different. For example, the mystery when they get a house to live temporarily and meet a girl is out of my expectation. However, sometimes it seems that they want to make surprise which resulted in the problem as they make some part ridicious. For example, the last moment when they meet the princess is too ridicious. Together with the Mandarin style Cantonese makes audience feel uncomfortable. Some of the plot in Beijing is also making you want to insult them.

In terms of performance, I consider TZE is still shining. He acts good as the main role for the whole movie. However, some of the characters are designed to be too stereotyped which may take down TZE a bit. One of the obvious example is Uncle Hang. If you've seen the first 10 minutes. I think you may be impatient to him as his diaglogue is inappropriate. I expect they want to make audience feel inpatient but they can make it in a more funny way to make audience easier to accept. It's not the fault of the actor but the movie.

Another problem of the movie is that the contrast and the impact of MEI is not strong enough to let audience get the feeling. Sometimes, they try to put diaglogues to fill in the dead air while omit that sometimes visions with scores only can be much more effective.

On the whole, I think TZE has once again shows his talent in 'Lord of Hangzhou'. However, due to the poor design of the side characters, which can't put the movie to a very good level on the whole.