To Be Number One
This "To Be Number One" (as there are a few with
this similar title) could have been an interesting movie with a slightly
more restrained performance from Ray Lui. It is in some way a HK Godfather
as it tells the story of Mainlander, Ho, and his comrades coming to HK
to make it good in the Triads. The movie spans over a number of years in
his career showing his rise ans fall. Parts of it are quite interesting,
but it seems to go on for much too long.
Ray Lui seems to be trying to imitate both Brando
and Chow Yun Fat at timesand his scenery chewing performance just annoyed
me to the point where I wanted to fast forwarded to the action scenes and
to the Amy Yip scenes.
Amy plays a triad moll who bounces (and does she
bounce) between boyfriends and though her role is not large - whenever
she shows up sporting lots and lots of cleavage my interest perked up.
There is one very good action shoot em up scene near the end. Though clearly
this film did not resonate with me, it was quite popular in HK and made
a star of Ray Lui. In the comedic parody of triad films - Days of Being
Dumb - Lui is a role model for the two triad wannabes - Jacky Cheung and
Tony Leung.
My rating for this film: 5.0