Jing hun ji

A lawyer, played by Lin Ching Hsia, is planning to pursue a career in Canada and therefore leave Hong Kong, when she is blackmailed. The lack of trust in people leads her to be suspicious with everyone, which eventually leads everyone to become suspicious with her. Bizarre events follow up and, in this movie led by women, they include axe-wielding, pen-stabbing and a double appearance by Joey Wong (who plays a couple of twins, one leading a simple life and one holding a criminal record). It's fun to see Lin Ching Hsia acting managerial and cool as if she were Asia the Invincible (and, sometimes, I had the feeling she was indeed portraying her most famous character!), however the movie never completely takes off, due to lack of introspection or thoughtful situations. Nevertheless, it's enjoyable to watch and there's plenty of action and deceiving smiles, to keep you interested throughout the 90 mins of movie. 6/10

Slick, throughly engaging suspenser thriller with Joey Wang and Brigitte Lin. Almost the entire film is set inside one house, but director David Chung, working with producer Tsui Hark, stages every twist and turn with such undivided focus and relish that he creates unbearable tension and fools us into thinking that it all makes perfect sense. Some of the plot developments are highly fanciful, but the bluish tint of the visuals and the sumptuous production design smooth over the minor misjudgments. The tone is drop dead serious and the murders are gory and inventive. Ex-cinematographer David Chung ("Painted Faces") has a potent directorial signature and never quite allows the visuals to dominate. Wang, playing twin sisters, is superb and gorgeous, and Lin, in an atypical role, has great screen authority. Elizabeth Lee, as Mimi, is ultra-sexy. There are many good reasons to see this, not the least being the carnally mouth-watering cast members.

You know, I just absolutely loved this film. Seriously I did. My local Suncoast video store made a fortunate mistake when they stocked this in their martial arts section. There are no butt-kicking femmes fatales in this--everyone uses weapons. At any rate, I was browsing through the kung-fu flicks (I also picked up "Butterfly and Sword,") when this film caught my eye. Specifically, Brigitte Lin caught my eye, and I love her movies. She's credited in this as Lin Ching Hsia though, FYI. Joey Wang also caught my eye, but I wasn't very happy with that. She creeps me out, for some reason. I saw her in "The East is Red" and I couldn't figure out if she was a beautiful woman or a beautiful man. Now she just bothers me.

The plot is CONTRIVED--Lin, a lawyer (played by Brigitte Lin), receives a blackmail note from an unidentified individual. I am not actually sure what she is being blackmailed for. The person blackmailing her needs money, and that's fine, but what did Lin do that's so awful? The blackmail note is Chinese characters glued to a piece of paper, and the DVD people decided not to subtitle signs and things. Nevertheless, someone is demanding money from Lin, and at the same time her company is falling apart seemingly do to her lack of interest. She is planning on moving to Canada, and she dwells on that a bit. As it turns out, her secretary May (Pauline Wong, I guess) is terrified at the prospect of the job-hunting in store for her when Lin leaves. Lin to me seems very unfeeling about that, or possibly unaware. I spent most of the film amazed that Lin got to be such a hotshot lawyer, as she's not very intelligent or even ambitious. She convinces her stockbroker (whom she believes to be the blackmailer) to sell all her stock for cash, which the stockbroker then delivers to her house.

At the same time, another plot branch is growing. Queenie, May's roommate, has a sister, Cat, that is getting out of prison. (Both sisters are played very well by Joey Wang.) When Queenie picks up Cat she takes her to a restaurant as a "welcome home" kind of thing. Cat notices a man outside, and bolts out of the restaurant. Queenie follows her, only to be accosted by the same man. He beats her and demands that she pay him the money she owes him. She is terrified, and asks if he has her confused with someone else. He doesn't know it, but he does--he's got the wrong sister. Queenie confronts Cat with this, but decides to do the goodwill thing and get the money. May enters the picture, and explains to Queenie that Lin has oodles of money in a drawer in her house. (Remember that Lin sold all her stock--that's where the money came from.)

From here on every plot device imaginable is used. There is a continual thunderstorm that flashes almost constantly, a corpse in the basement, money in a cabinet, a gun in an upstairs bedroom, a knife in someone's pantyhose, and cyanide cuisine on the dining room table. The poisoned dinner scene is wonderfully funny, and could be more so had they carried it a little further. Lin knows that someone is going to bump her off, so she's afraid to even touch the food. Finally, in order to escape, she feigns nausea and dashes to the bathroom. Once inside she contemplates escaping through a window, but that doesn't work. Finally she opens the medicine cabinet and grabs an eyebrow pencil to write a help note. Check out the face Brigitte makes when the pencil breaks! Fortunately the above-mentioned knife is in her pantyhose, so she sharpens the pencil. What's funny is how her character seems to react to things. There are three people with reason to kill her, and she spends most of the film asking these people to do things for her. Once she catches on to the plot, she acts inconvenienced more than frightened. When her eyebrow pencil breaks, she seems to be thinking, "Well, that's one more wonderful thing to happen today" as opposed to "Oh God, what I am going to do?" Once she adjusts herself though, everyone's in for a heck of a ride--literally. The car scene at the end does cause some nerve-tightening.

All in all this is a great entertaining movie. It was interesting to see Brigitte in a contemporary movie rather than a blood-and-guts period action movie. (She looks much more tall and slender without all those robes and sashes on. I did miss seeing her slaughter roomfuls of people with sewing needles, like she did as Asia the Invincible, but you can't have everything.) Kudos to everyone involved for making this so fun to watch. (As a side note, the producer was Tsui Hark, but how can one tell? This isn't his usual kind of thing, in my opinion.) 12 out of 10. Go Brigitte!!!

When comes to Hong Kong cinema, suspense thriller that explores Hitchcockian territory is quite a rare genre. Such case is David Chung's WEB OF DECEPTION -- an entertaining, if silly whodunit about betrayal, corruption, deception and greed.

Brigitte Lin is Jane, a troubled barrister who is about to relocate to Canada and leaving behind her faithful assistant May (Pauline Wong). However, Jane finds herself being blackmailed by an unknown party and suspects it's either May or her shady broker Miss Chow (Elizabeth Lee) might have something to do with this. As the movie progresses further, May is actually the one who send the blackmail note to Jane all along. Apparently she feels betrayed and under-appreciated after so many years of hard work but Jane doesn't even bother to take her along to Canada.

Meanwhile, May's roommate Queenie (Joey Wong) desperately needs a huge sum of money to clear her twin sister, Catherine's (also Joey Wong) debt she has owed the triad. When May knows about Queenie's situation, she suggests her to stage a break-in at Jane's mansion where she keeps the money inside a bag stored somewhere in the basement. At first, it's suppose to be a simple plan but things suddenly goes wrong. It turns out that Jane doesn't attend to a company party as scheduled, and ends up struggling with Queenie during the particular night. Queenie ends up dead, and Jane is naturally freaked out. She quickly calls May to help her solve the matter. At the same time, Catherine happens to be at the mansion as well and determines to exact revenge for her twin sister's death and plans to take the money together.

All three lead actresses (Brigitte Lin, Pauline Wong and Joey Wong) deliver top-notch performances. Joey Wong is particularly convincing in her dual roles where she requires to portray the timid-looking Queenie and the sassy Catherine. David Chung's direction is wickedly entertaining, especially the way Jane, May and Catherine who ends up pretending as Queenie trying to outwit each other in a cat-and-mouse game of duplicity (the dinner scene is especially notable here) and double-crossing. Chung knows well how to sustain a fair amount of claustrophobic tension (in which the movie is mostly set inside Jane's mansion) throughout the movie. As a cinematographer himself, Chung is efficient enough when comes to visual palette and moody lighting.

However, WEB OF DECEPTION is not without its share of flaws. There are times the movie requires suspension of disbelief and not to mention lots of contrivances, while Chung seems to be more interested to portray strong female characters and leave the male counterparts (e.g. Waise Lee's thankless role as Inspector Li) largely ignored. The surprise twist in the finale is mind-boggling and rather questionable, even though I can see Chung wants to leave the ending for an open debate.

While WEB OF DECEPTION is far from perfect, it remains entertaining enough for fans of Hong Kong cinema wanted to see something different than the usual genre offerings.

This obscure film is actually a pretty good B movie - murder suspense-thriller. But if one does not like extremely manipulative plot techniques, then it is best to stay away from this one, because it will leave you groaning most of the way through. Brigitte Lin and Joey Wang are to me the best Hong Kong actresses in recent years. All the current young things are no comparison at all in acting ability. They don't get much chance to show off these skills since the plot is so contrived, but they still pull it off to a good degree. Joey Wang plays a doppelganger twin sisters (one very good, the other very bad), Lin plays a domineering business executive who is being blackmailed by her most trusted secretary. All this leads to an accidental murder, and attempted coverup. It's all really great fun when taken tongue in cheek. (Though very serious.) I recommend this film to fans of either actress, or to those who like circa-1980s (USA) manipulative TV movies, which this is in that genre.