One Last Dance

A very well written story. The film gives a kaleidoscopic view of the underground world with an emerging focus on the role and life of individuals. The film provides reflections on deepest human emotions portrayed in a world where one does not expect such feelings to exist nor the desire to right wrongs. The film is challenging and a puzzle which slowly unfolds. Overall an interesting movie showing the more than two faces of the crime world. What We see is a sobering and even tragic picture of the crime world. There is fine acting and good selection of locations. For English speakers who must follow the translation some of the impact of the film in Cantonese may, unfortunately, not be fully appreciated.

One Last Dance is the story of T, a mysterious hit-man contracted by a local mob boss to kill the people responsible for the recent kidnapping and murder of said mob boss' son. However, things don't quite go according to plan, and as the bodies piles up, T finds himself questioning just how close to home his next target will be...

Can you say cliché? Good, because that's what One Last Dance is almost exclusively made of. The characters are exaggerated types and the ordinary plot has delusions of grandeur. While the dialogue does have its moments, such as a particularly informative conversation on the finer points of making a cup of tea, most of it is faux-cool and decidedly average.

The movie isn't helped by director Max Makowski either, with his unnecessary just-out-of-film-school camera tricks and gratuitous use of CGI for the smallest of things.

Its saving grace is the performance of Francis Ng, who plays T with the right balance of world-weariness and romanticism essential for any hired killer, and when he's off-screen, you certainly notice his absence. Ng's T keeps holds your interest when the plot fails and keeps the film afloat.

Good hit-man movies are stylish, smart, and cool, but for all its glossy trickery and pop-culture references, One Last Dance is not.

Argghhhh......there is no puzzle and no story plot. All T do is just kill! He has no feeling or whatever. He just go for the kill, killing all the people that he was asked to kill. Though, it may be the first attempt to make an action movie in Singapore, there is still room for improvement like No Animated Blood, the director should try and make this movie real not to make cheesy or boring. What we can say...this director came all the way to Singapore(which I assumed) to film this crap product. But the director did a great job in transforming Singapore into a creepy and gritty Singapore which we never saw. The only thing I recognize is the MRT Train.

The cast was okay and the music was beautiful. I was fooled by the gritty poster and straight away thought it was an action crime. And I was wrong...yeah, there is gun-blast and killing, so what and there must be a plot not the confusing twisting story, jump one scene to another without not knowing what that was about. I don't know what this director was telling us. Look like he wanted to show us his gritty art of Singapore. But there is still improvement for movies that featuring Singapore.

With its quirky text, flamboyant characters, gaudy outbursts of comic book violence, Makowski's glib, neo-Noirish, prodigiously hip gangster thriller is a worthy watch for lovers of stylised, off-beat Asian thrill-spillage. The notably fine cast includes, Francis Ng and HK icon, Ti lung, supported by a no less credible ensemble of engagingly energetic younger actors. While, Makowski clearly has a flair for eye-popping visuals I found the directors aggressive 'style' a little jarring at first, but it wasn't long before I became wholly engrossed in this eccentric existential hitman thriller. The flavoursome dialogue occasionally had a vividly Jim Jarmusch quality that provided additional interest, and I believe that another viewing will, perhaps, prove more seamless than the first. On a personal level, I didn't feel that, Harvey Keitel's conspicuous cameo did much more than draw attention to itself, but, the witheringly cool, Francis Ng delivers a fascinatingly nuenced performance as cerebral contract killer T.

The first local production for this year, it's a movie made with an international cast and crew, most notably, Asian film stars in Francis Ng, Ti Lung and Vivian Hsu, with a guest appearance by Harvey Keitel as an Italian mobster. It's no surprise that Raintree Pictures, in a bid to go regional and international, is holding nothing back to attract local and foreign talent to get them involved in locally produced movies. And I guess One Last Dance is such a fine example, helmed by upcoming Brazilian director Max Makowski.

I would liked to have loved this movie wholeheartedly, but it's not an easy movie to follow, especially when it keeps to its tagline that it's a story made up of different jigsaw pieces, each telling a story of its own. There are many seemingly disparate scenes glued together thinly, and it'll be easy for the ordinary viewer, especially one with little patience, to get lost within the plot. The dialogue too seemed stifled, and sometimes you wonder just what the characters are driving at.

The draw of this movie no doubt is Francis Ng. He's the "mental" guy who's truly deft in playing crazed characters, be they good or evil. Here, he's the calm, collected, and uber ruthless hit-man with a penchant for chess and never walks around with a loaded gun. He accepts deals anonymously via red "angpaos" dropped into a mailbox, containing just names of the prey (though you wonder how he actually gets paid). His opposite number is film legend Ti Lung, with whom he spars verbally, and on the chessboard.

Forget about the other stars, as they are mostly bit parts, and the beautiful Vivian Hsu reduced to a pedestrian in a role that could have been played by any mediocre local actress. However, do keep a lookout for Joseph Quek. I'm surprised that he managed to snag a meaty role, and this will mark his second big screen outing after The High Cost of Living. Surely, an actor to keep tabs on, if he stars in subsequent movies.

And I love the music, especially the theme song Broken Orange. It's now my earworm, and it constantly gets played over and over again in my head. The movie opens with the song, though I was perturbed that what was sung totally was out of sync with the English subtitles shown on screen, in an attempt to explain the meaning. Another pity too is that we got to watch the movie in the dubbed Mandarin track instead of its original Cantonese glory. I still rue for the day when HK movies are allowed to be shown in its native tongue, and get classified as a "foreign" movie, as do the French, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean, etc which do not get dubbed at all here.

To make up for a relatively simple plot (when all is finally revealed), the movie relies heavily on its slick editing techniques to splice the narrative together. However, the CGI blood splatterfest seemed too artificial, as I thought the good ol' blood pack will suffice and still maintain certain visual beauty to it all.

It almost lived up to its hype, but if you're a fan of Francis Ng, then my recommendation is to watch it. And don't be a dumb dork - stay until the end of the credits for THE GEM OF A SCENE. Many people during the gala didn't bother, what a pity!