Hi! Welcome to The Silver Spleen. My name is [censored] and this is my review of Dante Lam's
UNBEATABLE. Dante Lam's last film, THE VIRAL FACTOR,
sent me into apoplectic shock. So going into UNBEATABLE,
I was nervous. I didn't want to set my expectations too high,
but I did want to have expectations. I just wanna leave the cinema happy.
is that so wrong? UNBEATABLE tells the stories of several very different people
and their struggles. The most prominent stories are those of Eddie Peng and Nick
Cheung's characters.
Eddie Peng plays a young man trying to find focus in his life.
Nick Cheung plays a man on the far side of life, trying not only to move past the
mistakes he made, but to rectify them.
Both of them seek their goals through participating in an MMA tournament being
held in Macau.
Eddie Peng's character is trying to focus not only himself, but his father,
a failed businessman who still somehow has enough money
to gamble and drink himself to oblivion every day.
And he's not drinking paint thinner either. He's drinking Johnnie Walker
Black!
So he's got some money. Nick Cheung is also working on two fronts;
he's trying to negotiate a relationship with his emotionally
challenged landlady and her feisty daughter,
played by Crystal Lee. I'm not usually fond of children
(unless they're barbecued) but Crystal Lee was really entertaining
and quite impressive for such a young actor. She's almost reason enough to
watch the movie
all by herself. If she isn't, it's also great to see Philip Keung
as Nick Cheung's old friend who gets him a job in a gym. It's a small role,
but I really enjoyed it, and I was happy to see him on screen every time he
showed up.
That said, UNBEATABLE doesn't need any help from its supporting actors.
The film itself looks really great, and it could work as a tourism board
commercial for Macau.
It makes Macau look gorgeous. The cinematography was really, really good,
and the only time that I noticed some obvious video stuff was during the fight
scenes,
and at that point it kinda looks like television anyway, so it doesn't really
matter.
The fight choreography and the cinematography of the fights work
really well together.
I was very impressed by the fights, which not only looked authentic but pretty
painful.
It's more than obvious that Nick Cheung and Eddie Peng worked on more than just
their physiques for this movie.
Their fight scenes are realistic, and again I found myself flinching quite a
lot.
MMA rules don't actually allow some of the things that go on in these fights,
but they are dramatically useful, and it's a movie.
Andy On appears to have quite a lot of fun in his role as the antagonist,
a cocky wrecking ball of an MMA fighter.
He's very convincing in his fight scenes, as well he should be:
he's a trained martial artist. UNBEATABLE is a sports genre film
that calls to mind almost every boxing or fighting movie that I've ever seen:
RAGING BULL, THE FIGHTER, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, WARRIOR,
and probably others, but those are the ones I noticed the most. But it's not a
bad thing for a film to follow genre conventions;
WARRIOR was so generic that I could predict the plot a mile away,
but the film was so well-written and so well-acted that it really didn't matter.
To a great extent, UNBEATABLE succeeds in the same way.
There are no surprises here except that it's such a good movie.
The film's climax is as obvious and as expected as
the fate of the ship in TITANIC, but I didn't care.
Contrary to popular opinion, I can actually be pretty
easygoing and forgiving. All I ask is that you entertain me,
and UNBEATABLE definitely entertained me. It balances
drama and comedic moments really well; the laughs are all based in
dialogue and situations that are so everyday that it makes the characters that
much more human,
and thus allows the film's story to affect you that much more.
Nick Cheung's acting is even more impressive than his physique.
He displays a lot of subtlety and a lot of strength, and I hope he wins an armful
of awards for this movie.
Let me just leave you with a slightly odd but pertinent thought.
This movie makes me appreciate how lucky gay men and straight women are;
they get a big steaming bowl of eye candy in the middle
of a really good movie. What do straight guys get?
BEACH SPIKE. I really enjoyed UNBEATABLE and I think you should watch it.
But naturally, since I paid for a ticket, that's what I want you to do too.
Don't download this movie. Don't steal it. Pay for it. That way,
maybe they could make a sequel. When the movie is released to home video,
I'll update the description so you can buy it. If you enjoy this review,
I'd appreciate a comment. If you didn't, I'd appreciate a comment
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