WEEKEND IN TAIPEI - Mark Reviews Movies

Weekend in Taipei, Ketchup Entertainment

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | November 7, 2024

Co-writer/director George Huang, who hasn't directed a theatrical movie in almost 30 years, shows a good eye for and sense of action in Weekend in Taipei. The problem, then, is that this movie doesn't have that much action in it.

Instead, the story becomes a melodrama about separated lovers, who reunite after 15 years and relate the details of their star-crossed romance to us in a string of flashbacks. It's not nearly as serious as that makes it sound, because Huang and co-screenwriter Luc Besson keep the dynamic light and filled with some humor, since the whole thing is patently ridiculous. Still, it's odd to see a filmmaker spend so much of a movie actively working against the strengths he establishes so clearly in the first act.

It introduces us to John Lawlor (Luke Evans), a DEA agent who specializes in undercover operations. His current case has him on the hunt for a drug smuggling operation, being run out of Tawain by a Korean business magnate named Kwang (Sung Kang), currently under investigation and facing trial for corporate malfeasance. John has it out for Kwang for reasons that become obvious enough later, but before that, the movie simply revels in his fighting skills.

That comes by way of an exciting, chaotic, and smartly choreographed sequence in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant, where John discovers shipments of heroin being delivered in seafood cans and Kwang's local thugs discovering that the pastry chef is actually an undercover drug enforcement agent. Using everything and anything at his disposal in the space, John takes on attacker after attacker, pummeling them with pots and pans, using various cooking knives to stab and slash at them, and even diverting one henchman's swing of a meat cleaver directly into another thug's head.

It's a violent and brutal sequence, yes, but Huang stages and shoots it with clarity, at angles that allow us to appreciate the stunt work on display, and with a rhythm that makes it feel like the knock-down, drag-out brawl that it is. There's a nice comedic beat, in fact, when John simply stops fighting to catch his breath and grab a bottle of water, and considering how much punishment the two sides have been dealing to each other, Kwang's gang isn't opposed to having a bit of a rest before the carnage begins again.

The scene promises a lot for what's to come, so it's disappointing to report that the movie's first fight is its best one. Sure, there are others, with similar skills in front of and behind the camera to observe, as well as a sense of humor about how frantic the action can become. None of them, though, is as memorable or dynamic as this one.

That's mainly because the rest of the story does become so focused on John returning to Taipei City, after a 15-year absence, to retrieve evidence that could put Kwang behind bars for a long time, only to coincidentally find himself in front of the woman he loved all those years ago. She's Joey (Gwei Lun-Mei), an expert driver—a fact made amusingly clear when she takes an expensive sports car for a test drive through the city streets, swerving between cars and speeding down the wrong side of the road while the poor salesman holds on for dear life. Oh, she's also married to Kwang, since she has a son in his early teens named Raymond (Wyatt Yang) and wants some stability for herself and the kid.

Yes, those who can do basic math probably know this already, but Raymond is, indeed, John's son. The kid also despises his stepfather, arranging for an incriminating business ledger to be delivered to the DEA agent shortly after his arrival in the city. In the middle of a neat-enough shootout in a hotel suite, John is reunited with Joey, meets Raymond, and learns that the boy is his son. Now, they just have to escape Kwang and his henchmen, while also looking for another means of putting the crime lord in prison.

From there, matters of both plot and action cease, because John and Joey have to go over their past romance, bicker about distinctions of memory they have, and figure out what they're going to do now that John knows he has a kid. There's not much to this back story, except for how silly it—not to mention the attempts to make Evans and Kang look younger by way of wigs—is and, for all of the toughness they bring to their bits of action, how little chemistry exists between the romantic leads. It's far from enough to become invested in the relationship's past or its potential future as a family.

That makes the long stretch of exposition tougher to accept. It's not just that Weekend in Taipei forgoes the action, which is quite good, for such an extended period of time. It's also that the movie sacrifices its strongest element for one that's simply dull and unengaging.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products