Ah Kam

A film that starts strong, with Michelle Yeoh playing a stunt woman and offering the viewer a behind the scenes glance at the making of action movies in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, Yeoh was seriously injured while leaping 18 feet off a bridge for a stunt she didn't consider particularly dangerous, but landed vertically, on her head. Reports vary on the extent of her injuries, from fracturing a few vertebrae, to dislocating her neck and cracking some ribs, to "only" deep-tissue bruising and a cracked rib. She would say later, "I heard a snap in my back when I landed and said, 'Uh-oh, I'm going to paralyzed for life.'" She was in the hospital and in traction for many weeks.

The script was altered so that the film could be completed, but the result is a hodge-podge of tepid romance and an organized crime story. On the positive side, it allowed Yeoh to show off her acting chops, and not unexpectedly, she commands the screen. If you're a fan of hers, this is probably worth seeing. The plot just falls apart, however, meandering through a collection of story lines that lacked cohesive vision. There are several scenes of the guys getting drunk, and the character of the obnoxious young boy was grating. During the end credits we see footage of Yeoh following the stunt that went wrong, which was gripping to say the least but got a little uncomfortable. The crew moving her is alone cringe-inducing even if it was as gently as possible, and it then goes on for too long, almost as if director Ann Hui was trying to over-compensate for the messy second half of the film.

As a showcase for Michelle Yeoh, The Stunt Woman mostly works, but judged any other way, I think it kind of lost the plot. If it didn't lose the plot, then maybe some parts of it got lost in translation. Or maybe the film just lost me. It could've been a little of all three. Either way, something or someone was lost.

It's a movie about making a movie, and then it sort of becomes a crime film, and then it's a melodrama, and then it just tries to do a bit of everything in a chaotic final act that made me feel like something weird happened behind the scenes. If it's all meta and chaotic because it's about filmmaking and the difficulty of bringing a movie to fruition, then... sure? I think that might be a little too charitable.

The first hour or so of this was decent, if a little unremarkable. I think it only collapsed in on itself toward the end. So I didn't hate The Stunt Woman, but I also don't see it sticking with me. Maybe the idea of a good movie with Michelle Yeoh and Sammo Hung as the two leads was too good to be true. Maybe there are others. I can't think of any right now, though.

"The Stunt Woman" is far from a perfect film - it is quite slow and meandering - but it gives Michelle Yeoh the chance to show her stuff in an atypical dramatic role: instead of playing an aggressive, super-confident superwoman, she is just a simple, easygoing, unassuming, brave woman trying to earn her living by doing what she's best at, doubling actors for dangerous movie stunts. Her mature, restrained performance is pretty much the whole show here - and she looks great, too. The film is absorbing most of the way, but I have to be honest here: when Sammo Hung's character (an action director) advises an aspiring screenwriter to "liven up" his romantic tragedy with a few fight scenes, I thought that this film itself might have benefited from a similar approach. OK, it was obviously designed as a change-of-pace for its stars, but it still seems kind of wasteful to have Michelle, Sammo and Ken Lo in your movie and have a total of about 3 short fight scenes in it. (**1/2)

1st watched 1/1/2010 – 3 out of 10 (Dir-Ann Hui): Mixed-up mess of a movie about a stuntwoman and her experiences on and off the set. Michelle Yeah plays the woman who gets work with a crew making what appears to be a low budget kung fu movie in a very un-Hollywood- like set. She is really well liked by the director(Aka. The Boss) and everyone else and then gets more and more responsibilities. A gang randomly attacks the crew every once in awhile and causes havoc(this creates kind of a sub-plot). She has a brief romance with a restaurant owner, goes away from the business, but eventually comes back when this doesn't work out. The gang eventually kills the boss and then she's left to take care of the son, since she feels responsible as part of the crews family. This is basically the whole movie. Every incident seems to happen very quickly without much lead or development done for the characters. The movie comes across like it was chopped to pieces and was intended to be much longer. Characters come in and out of the story, things happen to them, and then we go onto the next scene. There is a central core of characters but in my opinion, this movie shows us a very shoddy bit of directing by an acclaimed Ann Hui. This could have been a good expose on this type of work but instead we get kind of a messed-up soap opera of a movie. If there is a longer director's cut that would be interesting to see but I don't know if it would improve the movie. The makers really come across like they really didn't know what kind of movie they wanted to make and it shows. Avoid this one.

Before the film I was watching the actors list. It seemed impressive with the names Michelle Yeoh and the legendary Sammo Hung. I immediately thought of kung fu fights and action. This is not what the film delivered even if the title suggests it. It's mostly a drama revolving around Yeoh's character Ah Kam. Ah Kam is an ordinary woman trying to get by, having success at some things and bad luck with others, just your typical basic drama plot with some twists thrown in. It starts nicely with scenes on an action movie set where they are shooting the stunts. After that it's downhill and towards the end it gets very jumpy, with weird scenes out of nowhere. I found it very difficult to follow the plot because the scenes felt somehow out of place and inconsistent. So what to expect of this film is Michelle Yeoh and Sammo Hung without the great action sequences you are used to seeing when associated with these names. The film delivers only a couple of average action scenes, but not enough to satisfy the people watching this for the action. Plus the end is totally mixed up and unsatisfactory. Even if I watched this without my "action glasses" as a drama, which it is, I wouldn't find it very good and I like a good drama film every now and then.