I appreciated this film because of my love for Zhou Xun's subtle, edgy acting style as well as the director's choice to make the 'modern-day' part of the film into a pseudo- documentary starring Tony Leung-Kar-wai. The story itself would have been more touching if the lighting and staging were less vibrant/staged. I'm not sure whether the fakeness of the dialogue and mise-en-scene are intentional, but it turned me off to a film dedicated to a nationally traumatic time for Greater China. It instantly reminded me of pro-CCP propaganda dramas... Shout out to the handsome and very talented two male actors! I had little faith in them but they proved me wrong this time around. :)
8 Reviews
Well made film, but nothing new to offer
Jithindurden1 December 2017
A well made drama set during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong focusing on the smaller moments of lives of people involved in the resistance. I have seen so many films about India's freedom struggle as well as the communist resistance during the National emergency in India that there wasn't a single thing that I wasn't familiar with in this film even though it talks about an entirely different country and situation. Still its a well-shot film with great production design which was at times a bit too theatrical that chronicles the life and struggles of the Hong Kong resistance members.
History in fantasy trappings
brianforever-6910712 July 2021
I'm a fan of Ann Hui Movies, especially so when she depict history in a fantasied setting, always impossible scenarios that her protagonist survives to fight another day.
Thoroughly enjoyed all the staged and properly framed parts that enhanced the whole. Never once is one ever disappointed and always being drawn into her takes as they are well done and truly unbelievable which is why they are so captivating even in dull moments.
Looking forward to another fairy tale from the maestro of surreal drama. Bravo !
Thoroughly enjoyed all the staged and properly framed parts that enhanced the whole. Never once is one ever disappointed and always being drawn into her takes as they are well done and truly unbelievable which is why they are so captivating even in dull moments.
Looking forward to another fairy tale from the maestro of surreal drama. Bravo !
Prestige WW2 set Ann Hui film.
Mozjoukine9 July 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Ann Hui is still a major figure but her work is more of a lucky dip these days. For every lively Yi ma de hou xian dai sheng huo / The POSTMODERN LIFE of My AUNT you're going to get something more ponderous.
Her new film is a prestige event celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the mainland take over of Hong Kong. It kicks off in 1941 when the Chinese Donjiang 'East River' guerrilla unit is tasked with rescuing the island's intellectuals from the Japanese occupation.
The film focuses in on author Tao Guo, rooming with the family of Deannie Yip and her out of work school teacher daughter, seemingly delicate Xun Zhou. He's given a pass word to recognise his deliverers. A pair of nasties in black (the equivalent of long leather overcoats I guess) show up instead, introducing cheery, murderous Eddie Peng and meaning that Deannie finds a blanket wrapped body in her alley way.
The escape is only the opening of a 130 minute (too) long movie following Xun's progress from the young woman who can't bear to have the family bunny killed for food though they are scrapping the last grains of rice from the jar, to a resistance fighter contemplating bombing and storming the Japanese troop base - the quietly made decision is the high point and most characteristic scene in the film.
Hard to see the value of the black and white framing story with long surviving Tony Ka Fai Leung (Prison on Fire) recounting events from his period as a child with the resistance.
The film's way of adding to the grim irony is Xun telling Peng as he sets out for the ultimate battle "Don't let your boat topple in shallow water." As with ALLIED it tries to re-animate the antagonisms of the WW2 propaganda movie and is devalued by it's over familiar depiction of a sadistic enemy - stabbing the mat wrapped body roll which had contained illicit weapons, the commander who only respects his prisoner's ability to stand after samurai sword slashes to his leg, prisoners digging their own graves with tin cans.
Design is a strong element with the 1942-era Wan Chai brick and timber constructions and the reproduced Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter particularly striking. The river scenics are exceptional, suggesting filming by a different unit but the one which has Xun waiting for the delayed ferry at night on the pier lit by a single swinging bulb is pure Ann Hui with it's counterpart in her best films - Song of the Exile's isolated rail stop.
Documentation is thin on this one. The score which I was admiring during the film turned out to be Joe Hisashi when we got to the end credits.
OUR TIME WILL COME is a major film from a major director. If you can handle something that is more contemplative than exciting, you shouldn't miss it's likely to be short run in the multiplexes.
Her new film is a prestige event celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the mainland take over of Hong Kong. It kicks off in 1941 when the Chinese Donjiang 'East River' guerrilla unit is tasked with rescuing the island's intellectuals from the Japanese occupation.
The film focuses in on author Tao Guo, rooming with the family of Deannie Yip and her out of work school teacher daughter, seemingly delicate Xun Zhou. He's given a pass word to recognise his deliverers. A pair of nasties in black (the equivalent of long leather overcoats I guess) show up instead, introducing cheery, murderous Eddie Peng and meaning that Deannie finds a blanket wrapped body in her alley way.
The escape is only the opening of a 130 minute (too) long movie following Xun's progress from the young woman who can't bear to have the family bunny killed for food though they are scrapping the last grains of rice from the jar, to a resistance fighter contemplating bombing and storming the Japanese troop base - the quietly made decision is the high point and most characteristic scene in the film.
Hard to see the value of the black and white framing story with long surviving Tony Ka Fai Leung (Prison on Fire) recounting events from his period as a child with the resistance.
The film's way of adding to the grim irony is Xun telling Peng as he sets out for the ultimate battle "Don't let your boat topple in shallow water." As with ALLIED it tries to re-animate the antagonisms of the WW2 propaganda movie and is devalued by it's over familiar depiction of a sadistic enemy - stabbing the mat wrapped body roll which had contained illicit weapons, the commander who only respects his prisoner's ability to stand after samurai sword slashes to his leg, prisoners digging their own graves with tin cans.
Design is a strong element with the 1942-era Wan Chai brick and timber constructions and the reproduced Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter particularly striking. The river scenics are exceptional, suggesting filming by a different unit but the one which has Xun waiting for the delayed ferry at night on the pier lit by a single swinging bulb is pure Ann Hui with it's counterpart in her best films - Song of the Exile's isolated rail stop.
Documentation is thin on this one. The score which I was admiring during the film turned out to be Joe Hisashi when we got to the end credits.
OUR TIME WILL COME is a major film from a major director. If you can handle something that is more contemplative than exciting, you shouldn't miss it's likely to be short run in the multiplexes.
Our time may never come
wickedmikehampton16 December 2020
I admire directors like Hui who keep making movies despite never getting rich.
'Our Time Will Come' may have been on a small budget but actress Xun Zhou is one of the biggest stars in China. I only found that out because her acting made me curious. Turns out that there are half a dozen movies of hers that I should see.
'Our Time Will Come' may be a biopic about resistance fighters but focuses on drama not special effects.
It's not a big movie but better than average because I was appreciative of it for teaching me a history I never knew.
Whereas every country has gone through enormous trouble and most of the Public accept victimhood, there are always heroes. Here, a young woman becomes a legend.
Undoubtedly, many parts in between were fictionalised but Hui made a smart move by inserting pieces of an interview she did with a taxi driver. He was 10 years old, a message carrier for the resistance against the Japanese, and he met our heroine twice. He's the last alive so it's sad that this old man must still drive a taxi to stay alive.
And even sadder that Hong Kong, once again, is fighting for its freedom which, I expect, it will lose.
'Our Time Will Come' may have been on a small budget but actress Xun Zhou is one of the biggest stars in China. I only found that out because her acting made me curious. Turns out that there are half a dozen movies of hers that I should see.
'Our Time Will Come' may be a biopic about resistance fighters but focuses on drama not special effects.
It's not a big movie but better than average because I was appreciative of it for teaching me a history I never knew.
Whereas every country has gone through enormous trouble and most of the Public accept victimhood, there are always heroes. Here, a young woman becomes a legend.
Undoubtedly, many parts in between were fictionalised but Hui made a smart move by inserting pieces of an interview she did with a taxi driver. He was 10 years old, a message carrier for the resistance against the Japanese, and he met our heroine twice. He's the last alive so it's sad that this old man must still drive a taxi to stay alive.
And even sadder that Hong Kong, once again, is fighting for its freedom which, I expect, it will lose.
Ann Hui's historic and geopolitical masterwork
lasttimeisaw6 July 2019
After sinking her teeth in the Second Sino-Japanese War period (1937-1945) with THE GOLDEN ERA (2014), a biopic of Chinese literary writer Xiao Hong (1911-1942), Hong Kong auteur Ann Hui returns to the same time-frame to limn heroic real-life events during Japan's occupation of Hong Kong.
In OUR TIME WILL COME, the focal point is trifurcated, the central one is Fong Lan (Zhou Xun), a young girl whose kismet changes forever when she becomes an anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter; then there is Blackie Liu (Eddie Peng), a fellow comrade and lead figure who is very adept at point-blank firefight, and shares a deep camaraderie with Fong; finally, Fong's boyfriend Li Jinrong (Wallace Hua), a spiffy chef who ostensibly works for Japanese military corps, but in fact is a mole trying every possible way to get cardinal information out to the subterranean compatriot fighters. Therefore, Liu represents the external front with outright confrontation, Li the undermining internal force and they are linked together by Fong's precarious courier mission, the whole anti-Japanese coalition converges with a pellucid blueprint.
Commencing with a hefty mission of aiding 800 Chinese intellectuals to leave the occupied Hong Kong - among which there is literary dignitary Sheng Congwen and his wife (Guo Tao and Jiang Weili), who happen to be the tenants of Fong's mother (Ip), and Fang has the first brush with the guerrillas when Liu has to dispatch a fifth column squarely in her abode, OUR TIME WILL COME (whose Chinese title is borrowed from a proverbial Song Dynasty poem written by Su Shi, can be approximately translated to "When there will be a bright moon?") perversely goes against the grain with mainstream patriotic crowdpleasers, Hui adopts an unflinching holistic perspective to cover the three-pronged coalition with loosely connected events, effected by both the ordinary and the extraordinary folks, valiant acts are interlaced with commonplace activities: nuptial ceremony still goes on despite of privation, a close encounter with Japanese soldiers while transporting concealed arms is saved by a fortuitous ploy, and Li's uneasy rapport with a verse-conversant Japanese Colonel Yamaguchi (Nagase) is undercut by their indissoluble political schism.
However, the clincher is actualized by Ms. Fong, played by veteran actress Deannie Ip with copacetic flair of a cipher's flesh-and-blood metamorphosis from a canny busybody to an unlikely martyr, whose seemingly ingenious but ill-fated decision of hiding an important note in the hem backfires with severe repercussions. Just as we naturally expect a go-for-it rescue mission might bring about a heroic, bloodletting crossfire spectacle, Hui, pluckily opts for an unorthodox approach, by entrusting Zhou Xun to lay bare Fong Lan's profound oscillation as she has the toughest decision to make, to rescue her mother or not, and Zhou delivers a heart-rending explication that hits home the movie's emotional zenith.
Stage-managed with Hui's gracious pace of her felicitous narrative and DP Nelson Yu Lik-Wai's vibrant palette of a tumultuous era, OUR TIME WILL COME culminates with a majestic coup de maître, a panning shot that transcends time to the current Hong Kong, where we see senior Ben (Tony Leung Ka-Fai), an erstwhile Fong Lan's pupil and guerrilla fighter, whose Black-and-White faux-documentary interview snippets begin and punctuate the chronological recount, get into his taxi and drive away, pertinently brings down the curtain of Ann Hui's historic and geopolitical masterwork which bears out that she is the last (wo)man standing in Hong Kong cinema, whose artistry propitiously inhabits a niche under the overlaying climate of Chinese government's harsh censorship.
In OUR TIME WILL COME, the focal point is trifurcated, the central one is Fong Lan (Zhou Xun), a young girl whose kismet changes forever when she becomes an anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter; then there is Blackie Liu (Eddie Peng), a fellow comrade and lead figure who is very adept at point-blank firefight, and shares a deep camaraderie with Fong; finally, Fong's boyfriend Li Jinrong (Wallace Hua), a spiffy chef who ostensibly works for Japanese military corps, but in fact is a mole trying every possible way to get cardinal information out to the subterranean compatriot fighters. Therefore, Liu represents the external front with outright confrontation, Li the undermining internal force and they are linked together by Fong's precarious courier mission, the whole anti-Japanese coalition converges with a pellucid blueprint.
Commencing with a hefty mission of aiding 800 Chinese intellectuals to leave the occupied Hong Kong - among which there is literary dignitary Sheng Congwen and his wife (Guo Tao and Jiang Weili), who happen to be the tenants of Fong's mother (Ip), and Fang has the first brush with the guerrillas when Liu has to dispatch a fifth column squarely in her abode, OUR TIME WILL COME (whose Chinese title is borrowed from a proverbial Song Dynasty poem written by Su Shi, can be approximately translated to "When there will be a bright moon?") perversely goes against the grain with mainstream patriotic crowdpleasers, Hui adopts an unflinching holistic perspective to cover the three-pronged coalition with loosely connected events, effected by both the ordinary and the extraordinary folks, valiant acts are interlaced with commonplace activities: nuptial ceremony still goes on despite of privation, a close encounter with Japanese soldiers while transporting concealed arms is saved by a fortuitous ploy, and Li's uneasy rapport with a verse-conversant Japanese Colonel Yamaguchi (Nagase) is undercut by their indissoluble political schism.
However, the clincher is actualized by Ms. Fong, played by veteran actress Deannie Ip with copacetic flair of a cipher's flesh-and-blood metamorphosis from a canny busybody to an unlikely martyr, whose seemingly ingenious but ill-fated decision of hiding an important note in the hem backfires with severe repercussions. Just as we naturally expect a go-for-it rescue mission might bring about a heroic, bloodletting crossfire spectacle, Hui, pluckily opts for an unorthodox approach, by entrusting Zhou Xun to lay bare Fong Lan's profound oscillation as she has the toughest decision to make, to rescue her mother or not, and Zhou delivers a heart-rending explication that hits home the movie's emotional zenith.
Stage-managed with Hui's gracious pace of her felicitous narrative and DP Nelson Yu Lik-Wai's vibrant palette of a tumultuous era, OUR TIME WILL COME culminates with a majestic coup de maître, a panning shot that transcends time to the current Hong Kong, where we see senior Ben (Tony Leung Ka-Fai), an erstwhile Fong Lan's pupil and guerrilla fighter, whose Black-and-White faux-documentary interview snippets begin and punctuate the chronological recount, get into his taxi and drive away, pertinently brings down the curtain of Ann Hui's historic and geopolitical masterwork which bears out that she is the last (wo)man standing in Hong Kong cinema, whose artistry propitiously inhabits a niche under the overlaying climate of Chinese government's harsh censorship.
Not all that interesting for a non-Chinese audience
blott2319-15 October 2021
I'm all for a good war movie particularly when it is about a small revolutionary force against a powerful enemy, but Our Time Will Come really wasn't all that good. It simply lacks focus on the characters, so I never found myself getting emotionally engaged in their fight. There are certainly some people that are highlighted throughout the film, but none of them are a central figure for long enough. They also chop the film up into assorted vignettes rather than focusing on a central narrative with a clear goal and how they expect to achieve it. I'm not saying that it lacked accuracy, because I'm sure war can be like that, you merely hang in there and survive any given moment in order to make it to the next. But it didn't grab me as a film, with the exception of a few minor moments. In all honesty, I even struggled to keep track of who I was meant to be rooting for in some scenes, which is never a great experience in a war movie. I suppose to a Chinese audience Our Time Will Come might be a bit more impactful, but for me it was just bland.
Our Time Will Come / indeed
kelvtee3 November 2020
From acclaimed Hong Kong film director Ann HUI. Without much spoiler, acclaimed actor Tony LEUNG Ka-fai storytelling WWII Japan occupation of Hong Kong Chinese, acted by stellar cast ZHOU Xun, Eddie PENG, Wallace HUO, Deanie IP et al.
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