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an action film than a mild mystery with heavy doses of mental imbalance, Benny
Chan's "Divergence" has more in common with the director's previous
films like "Heroic
Duo" (which also starred "Divergence's" Ekin Cheng) than his
teen-heavy throwaway films like "Gen-X
Cops" and its most unfortunate follow-up, "Gen-Y
Cops". "Divergence" is Chan's most recent film after the
Jackie Chan comeback vehicle "New
Police Story", which also starred "Divergence's" Daniel Wu,
here playing a hired killer who crosses paths with cop Aaron Kwok while the
latter is escorting a witness back to Hong Kong from Canada.
The first thing you notice is that
"Divergence" has more story and characterization than the
usual hired killer film that comes out of Hong Kong (which is to say
Hong Kong probably makes way too many formulaic hired killer movies for
any one film industry). The lead is Aaron Kwok (very effective as a judo
punk in Johnnie To's "Throwdown"),
playing a cop perpetually on the precipice of a mental breakdown. Kwok's
Sean is not having a good day -- after his witness is shot full of holes
by Coke (Daniel Wu), Sean is suspected of leaking information to the
killers.
Later, while following dispassionate criminal
lawyer To (Ekin Cheng, in a humorously subdued performance), Sean spots
someone he believes to be his girlfriend (Angelica Lee), who has been
missing for the last 10 years. Could it be? Or is the woman, who is also
To's wife, just happen to bear a striking resemblance to Sean's missing
girlfriend, a woman who vanished one night, never to return. Or did she?
And why does hired killer Coke seem to be intimating that he knows
something about what happened to Sean's girlfriend? Add to this a
subplot about a vigilante serial killer, the case of a dirty
businessman's suddenly missing son (who is also a manufactured pop star,
no less), and there are enough subplots in "Divergence" for
two movies. Or three.
Although heavy with plot, "Divergence"
seems less concern about the police angle than following the slowly
self-destructing career of Sean, which in this case is a good thing,
because Sean makes for an interesting character, while the whole cop
stuff smells of cop movie clichés. One of the film's more interesting
subplots is a scene near the beginning, when Sean, while escorting a
prisoner on a plane, is recognized by two women. It's revealed that Sean
used to be on TV, although how and why is never really made clear, or
followed up on, unfortunately. Was Sean some kind of hero cop who showed
up on TV often? I don't know why, but the fact that Chan and writer Ivy
Ho brought up this idea of Sean the cop as also being a former TV star,
only to never touch it again, kept me thinking about the question
throughout the entire film.
Unanswered questions to wacky, 5-second subplots
aside, "Divergence" makes for very interesting viewing, even
though there's nothing overly special about the film as a whole, and one
finds it difficult to explain why it makes for worthwhile viewing. As a
cop film, "Divergence" is run-of-the-mill, with Sean
portraying the usual "loose cannon cop", although Sean seems
to be more loose cannon than cop. In another of the film's more
intriguing quirks (at least to this reviewer), is the question of
whether actor Aaron Kwok chooses his own movie wardrobe, or if it was
the film's intention to dress the character in pants that are at least
two inches too short (thus revealing his white socks often), or that the
character always seems to be disheveled, giving the impression that he
sleeps in his car as a rule of thumb, which may also explain the man's
poor posture.
In a bit of false advertisement, "Divergence"
opens with a good action scene where Coke dispatches of Sean's witness,
followed up by a cat-and-mouse game between Sean and Coke that seems to
go nowhere. There are other active subplots, such as Sean's continued
search for his missing girlfriend, his stalking of To's wife, and his
visits to the mortuary where he converses with morgue guy Eric Tsang
(doing cameo duty along with Suet Lam). There's a final, violent gun
battle in the rain to close things out, but it's interesting to note
that the sequence doesn't involve any of the three main characters, none
of whom appears on scene until the last shot has been fired.
Of the
three main principals, Aaron Kwok gets most of the screentime,
especially in the beginning, with Ekin Cheng and Daniel Wu seemingly
slipping in and out of the film at random intervals just to remind us
that they have something to do with the movie. (But fear not, all is
revealed at film's end.) "Divergence" keeps its major question
-- is To's wife Sean's missing girlfriend or isn't she? -- unanswered
until the very end, which is a good idea from a scripting point of view,
but a poor one if you are a fan of Angelica Lee, who is criminally
underused throughout. Coming off the excellent "A1"
with Anthony Wong, and before that the equally excellent "Koma",
it's disappointing to see Lee in a supporting role that keeps her in the
background with nothing to do for much of the film.
"Divergence" is an interesting film in many
respects. As an action film, it doesn't always deliver on the goods; as
a crime film, it's also a bit lacking. But as a character film, it's
quite good, helped in no small part by Aaron Kwok's affecting
performance. Ekin Cheng is mostly a non-entity, and Daniel Wu seems to
be having a ball coming off his award-winning role in Jackie Chan's
"New Police Story". Although hard to pin down,
"Divergence" makes for intriguing viewing, if only because
it's a very odd film, and you wish there was about 30 more minutes of
movie time available just to get everything in.
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