ARMAGEDDON (1997)

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Sound format: Dolby Digital

In Gordon Chan's disappointing sci-fi potboiler ARMAGEDDON - Hong Kong's response to "The X Files" - Andy Lau plays a communications expert who is targeted for destruction by a mysterious organization known as the 'Brotherhood of Technology', which is somehow linked to the recent deaths of several prominent scientists, all of whom were victims of spontaneous human combustion (spectacularly demonstrated during the opening sequences, one of the film's few dramatic highlights). Throughout the investigation, Lau is visited repeatedly by the ghost of his recently-deceased girlfriend (Michelle Reis), and her presence appears to confirm a series of clues that foretell the end of the world. Unfortunately, the climactic explanation - which strives for cosmic significance - is so poorly conceived and executed that it belittles the entire project, especially the second-rate visual effects used to depict the onset of Armageddon.

Chan's direction is merely functional at best, except for a handful of scenes which focus exclusively on the intimate details of his characters' lives, but these neatly observed moments only serve to betray his impatience with the generic demands of commercial cinema. For the most part, Chan's film is simply too slow for its own good, mainly because he allows a series of lengthy dialogue scenes to continue well beyond their relevance to the plot, thereby slowing the narrative to a crawl. That's right, this is HK's first *boring* action movie! Ultimately, the best that can be said of the film is that it attempts to foster new areas of enquiry for HK cinema, but all its good intentions are wasted on mediocre material.