The Touch

I just saw The Touch at a theater here in China. That movie is fantastic !! Michelle Yeoh is great, amazingly charismatic, beautiful, and a remarkable martial artist. Ben Chaplin is great too, really at ease and perfectly believable. the movie itself is an amazing adventure flick, very funny by moments, and with an intense ending. Don't miss it, really !

The Touch is Michelle Yeoh's first movie as producer, executive producer and writer (as well as star), and the first movie from her new production company. Now Michelle Yeoh is a smart and sensible woman (and she can kick ass with the best), so expectations for this big budget production with Peter Pau in the director's chair were naturally high - certainly I had high hopes for it. That changed when it came out and it seemed to be universally acclaimed a major disappointment. I almost decided to pass it over completely, but you know sometimes you have to see a certain movie even if you know it's going to be bad, 'cause it's still a 'significant' or 'important' film in some sense.

Thanks to all the negative press, my expectations for the movie were much lower when I sat down to watch it. I mean, we're talking the kind of expectations that make The Blacksheep Affair look like a good film... so it's not really a surprise that I found myself enjoying The Touch. But I mean I found myself *really* enjoying it. A lot!

First with the bad, the reasons people were presumably disappointed. There are some very cheesy moments in places, moments and lines that feel too artificially inserted, too 'script'. There's some bad acting in places - some from the bad guy's goons but most notably from Brandon Chang, who plays Michelle's younger brother (his girlfriend was pretty bad too, but she didn't have as much chance to show it). And most notably there are some really terrible special effects in the final climax - about 15 years out of date

But then with the good! First surprise, it's really funny! Most of the humour comes from the guest Gwei Los Ben Chaplin and Richard Roxburgh, both of whom have really good characters and some brilliant lines. They also break a long tradition of white actors in HK films by being really good, and not at all annoying. Richard Roxburgh's villain in particular is a charismatic classic. Then there's the story, which is all quite cheesy but reasonably involved and well developed. It's a good old fashioned adventure yarn. And then there's the production values... especially the great sets and locations filmed beautifully by Peter Pau. The soundtrack is really good too, though it sounds very Hollywood (I'm not normally a fan of Hollywood's overblown and generally forgettable soundtracks, but I like this one).

It must be said that The Touch does in many ways feel more like a Hollywood movie than a Hong Kong movie - the fact that it is 95% filmed in English undoubtedly being part of it. Hong Kong film makers normally fail miserably when they attempt to make a Hollywood style movie, but I think that this case represents a near success. If it weren't for those dreadful special effects I think it would have a very good chance of competing on the Hollywood distribution circuits. And I believe the production company have taken the unusual step of hiring a different firm (the normally excellent Centro) to completely redo the special effects for a US release. This may be one case where the US version of a HK movie actually improves on the original.

One thing that is expected of a Hong Kong movie starring Michelle Yeoh is obviously a high calibre of action. This is perhaps where the movie disappoints, as there isn't as much action in the film as I expect most viewers would have liked. There are a couple of fight scenes that show off Michelle's skills well, but Philip Kwok's choreography isn't all that exciting unfortunately. Not bad, but not up to the standard of Michelle's fights in Royal Warriors, for example. Especially disappointing is the final climax, which should have been a raw bone crunching showcase of martial arts prowess but is in fact a limp showcase of terrible CGI. Bad call to go the special effects route, Michelle!

If I hadn't had my expectations lowered by those who saw the movie before me, I guess there's a fair chance I'd have ended up disappointed in The Touch too. Because I wasn't expecting too much I found much more to enjoy than I bargained for. In fact, I'd say I enjoyed the movie more than any other 2002 Hong Kong movie I can think of (not saying much admittedly, since 2002 was a terrible year for HK movies). It's a movie I will happily watch again (though I'll wait for the US release perhaps) and have no hesitation recommending to others.

"The Touch" is an adventure movie in the tradition of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". It tells the story of a Chinese family of artists who specialized in difficult jumps for many generations. Only such a jump, seeming impossible to anyone else, will make it possible to obtain a holy treasure. Two family members are kidnapped by a treasure hunter (Richard Roxburgh) to get the treasure for him. Yin (Michelle Yeoh), being the head of the family after the demise of her father, pursues them into the desert.

Genre movie without big surprises, but well made (except for the final fight which looks like computer game inspired green screen effects), featuring a female star who successfully avoids any Lara Croft similarities and uses her scarf both as a weapon and a swing rope. "The Touch" was shot in places where nobody else was allowed to film before. The landscapes of Tibet are impressive and make the movie more memorable than the thin plot deserves.

As a huge fan of Michelle Yeoh, I was waiting with baited breath to see a beautifully photographed movie with her as the star. An English language movie that was supposed to have world-wide appeal, proof to everyone that she had the true star power she already had for me and many others. While the photography was gorgeous and her strength in the lead role was obvious, the story was weak. Worse yet, the action scenes seemed too slow and "choreographed-looking." The attempts at humor were not only poor, but got really annoying. Worst of all, Michelle played the role of a wonderfully dynamic, good-hearted, woman who still loves a heel, a former love and father of their son. Ben Chaplin does a good job of playing the role of a self-centered, unreliable, untrustworthy crook with absolutely no redeeming value. I know in real life lots of women love the worst men, so there's no escapism here. But this movie makes it look like its cool to be a jerk, making it all the harder to watch. I bought the DVD for my Michelle collection. How many times I'll be able to watch it, I don't know.

Unoriginal, poorly produced, poorly acted, and ultimately disappointing, this film takes the beautifully orchestrated acrobatic moves of Crouching Tiger (not to mention the leading lady), but executes them with an awkwardness surpassed only by the overused blue-screen and computer-generated special effects. Some of the action scenes were well done, but as a whole, it failed to bring anything more than what most low-grade action films offer.

The many attempts to inject humor into the film, via the classic "moronic American idiot" who bumbles around the film acting like he just left the set of latest Police Academy installment, is so out of place that it annoyinging disrupts the flow of the film and leaves the audience to wonder, "what the hell is that guy doing in this movie?"

Perhaps most disappointing were the performances of the two lead characters, who after promising roles in "Crouching Tiger" and "Birthday Girl" seemed to have settled for whatever script was tossed their way.

I rated this film a 4. It was compelling enough that I stayed to see the ending, but in the end, I wish that I hadn't. Utterly forgettable and disappointing...