Starring : Lee Sinjie, Isabella Leong, Chang Chen, Guo Xiaodong, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Chang Cheng Yue
Directors:
Tsui Hark
Scheduled release:
Now showing

Once upon a time, Tsui Hark’s name on a film poster would get moviegoers all excited and full of anticipation. That was as it should be, seeing that the veteran movie man’s filmography includes masterpieces like Shanghai Blues, Peking Opera Blues, the A Better Tomorrow trilogy, the Swordsman trilogy and the Once Upon a Time in China series, etc. But that was back in the 20th century and we’re now into the 21st, where, most notably with this latest work Hark directed, scripted and produced, not just enthusiasm for his films but even posters and other publicity for them seem thin on the ground.

After viewing Missing (a title ripe for jokes about the film’s lack of presence in the same way Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 couldn’t but inspire jokes about delays in its release), one has to wonder whether all that was intentional. A movie that’s utterly missing such fundamentals as a coherent plot and characters to empathize with, it leads viewers up multiple blind alleys and seems to want to be too many discordant types of cinematic product: a supernatural romance a la A Chinese Ghost Story (which Tsui Hark produced), a ghostly horror a la The Eye (starring Missing’s star Lee Sinjie), a supernatural crime drama-mystery a la Silk (which starred Chang Chen), and the sort of fantastical film in which individuals physically transform from animals to humans or vice versa a la Green Snake (directed by Tsui Hark).

Early on though, all seemed well with Missing and the world occupied by its characters. Dave Chen (Guo Xiaodong) is a successful underwater photographer. Dr Jing Gao (Lee Sinjie) is a popular psychiatrist who shares his love of the underwater world. And Helen (Isabella Leong), Dave’s sister and Jing’s patient, is just one of many individuals happy to find that Dave and Jing have fallen in love.

Eager to share more of his world with his lady love, Dave invites Jing to go diving off Japan’s Yonaguni Island and view the mysterious ruins found off it. She accepts, but what should have been a happy excursion leads to Dave’s untimely death and other disastrous results for the movie. So much so that even other capable actors like Chang Chen and Tony Leung Ka Fai can’t add much to the work; in fact, theirs are just two of the characters who significantly contribute to muddying waters that would have been better if considerably clearer.

Yvonne Teh