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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A promising film that can't decide what it wants to be, November 20, 2003
I think Victim was a pretty good film, but I'm not sure because I didn't really grasp all of the intricate details of the plot to my satisfaction. Perhaps there is something missing in the English subtitles of this Cantonese film from famed Hong Kong director Ringo Lam, but I thought Victim never did figure out exactly what kind of movie it wanted to be. The plot summation I had read led me to expect a film of ghostly possession and one man's fight against such otherworldly forces, but the whole ghost sub-plot never worked for me and only got in the way of my appreciation for everything else that was going on. The film starts off quite promisingly, as a guy gets sandwiched between a minivan and a wall; security video shows a man being kidnapped and placed into that van just before it made its memorable exit. Hong Kong's finest is on the case, with Detective Pit (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) taking a pretty intense personal interest in the matter. Word comes to the kidnapped man's girlfriend Amy (Amy Kwok Oi-Ming) that her boyfriend Ma Mansun (Lau Ching-Wan) can be found at a nearby abandoned building. This particular place is known by everyone to be haunted, as back in 1967 a man killed his wife for supposedly cheating on him and then killed his child and himself. Pit and the gang find Ma hanging from a chain, but the nature of the discovery doesn't sit well with Pit. The sequence in the house, with Pit and a fellow cop searching the old place by flashlight, has a nice creepy feel to it, and Pit's experience had me wondering if he would be touched by a ghostly presence himself, especially since his own personal situation bears a strong resemblance to the home's infamous former owner. There's an exciting high speed chase scene later on, but the action sequences are more than balanced out by slower scenes that left me struggling to get a solid grasp on what exactly was going on. Things start to get a little complicated at this point. Ma isn't talking, and what he does say makes little sense or comes out in a fit of fury (words aren't the only things that come out of his mouth in one scene, I might add). His girlfriend is confused and scared, Detective Pit begins to work the case so hard that he neglects his family, and then we get this whole story about Ma's economic woes and his possible ties to some loan sharks or worse. I never knew where this movie would go next, and I guess that is a good thing in a way. It certainly doesn't turn out the way I expected it to, and I can't help wondering what the purpose of the whole ghost subplot is doing in an otherwise gritty suspense film. I much prefer English subtitles to English dubbing on a foreign film such as this, especially when the performances consist of a lot of highly emotional dialogue, but Victim does not feature particularly good subtitles. There are some really awkward translations that come across the screen, but much more annoyingly there are a number of times when the white subtitles are displayed against a white background, making parts of the dialogue impossible to read. Obviously, I am not completely enamored with this film, but Victim is a quite interesting viewing experience and is well worth a look for anyone longing to try something new or to sample the wares of foreign filmmaking. A couple of scenes are just a tad gory, but I would certainly not consider Victim a horror movie of any kind. It's a suspenseful thriller with an intricate plot, some impressive action sequences, and a story that seems to bite off slightly more than it can chew - at least in translation.
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