Half Twin

Year:2006


Candy Lo and Carl Ng
Director:Yip Wai-Ying
Cast:Candy Lo Hau-Yam, Eric Kot Man-Fai, Carl Ng Ka-Lung, Bella Zhang, Michelle Zhang
Description:
Half Twin is the latest from filmmaker Tony
Leung Hung-Wah, the man behind the underwhelming PTU
File - Death Trap, plus the all-out terrible Demoniac
Flash. Leung only wrote and produced Half Twin,
and left the directing duties to Yip Wai-Ying, the
man behind the forgettable I Want To Get Married.
The teaming of these two purveyors of average cinema
should lead any self-respecting filmgoer to seriously
doubt the quality of Half Twin. Fortunately,
the film is actually better than expected - meaning
it doesn't completely, absolutely blow. Obviously,
that's not a ringing endorsement.
Candy Lo does double
duty as twin sisters Lok Ling and Lok Yan. A grainy
flashback reveals that the two were separated when
only nine years old, with Yan going with her father
to Shenzen, where he climbed the corporate ladder
and gave Yan a decent upbringing and a solid future.
Ling, on the other hand, was taken to Hong Kong by
her mother, who soon died, leaving Ling to face an
unfortunate life without any sort of parental guidance.
Ling and Yan meet thanks to corporate sleaze Ko , who's on Yan's bad side due to some bad business
decisions at Yan's company. The first meeting goes
poorly; Ling doesn't really want to reconcile with
Yan, plus Ko has something nasty up his sleeve. Ko
plans to have Ling pose as Yan and cede control of
the company to him, thus giving him ultimate power
and revenge against the woman who called him a crappy
employee. But will Ling go along?
Yes she does, because if
not there wouldn't be a movie. Half Twin focuses
heavily on Lok Ling, and Candy Lo gives her noticeable
inner life, if not the darkness necessary for the
role. Half Twin possesses the workings of a
dark and twisted potboiler, and even throws out such
sordid details as first-degree murder and the rape
of a 10 year-old girl . Still, despite the
darkness presented, the film goes soft when it begins
to focus on Ling's burgeoning self-discovery. After
falling in with Ko and subsequently getting annoyed
at his smarmy ways, Ling befriends Yan's boyfriend
Wing , who's under the impression that she's
Yan. Ling plays along, the two experience a semi-cute
pseudo-romantic interlude, and Ling finally learns
that maybe it's not so helpful to be pissed off all
the time. For screenwriting students, that's called
a character arc.
Ling's rediscovery of her
good side is a likable detail, and the filmmakers
manage a few moments of subtle character interaction.
The scenes are sometimes lifted from other films,
or they're staged in a curiously light manner, but
there does seem to be some attention to character
in Half Twin. That Tony Leung Hung-Wah and
Yip Wai-Ying even bothered trying is worthy of mention,
and possibly even credit. Sadly, this attention to
character is complemented by a largely predictable
thriller plotline that's only tense because the overbearing
musical score demands it. For a supposed thriller,
predictability + lack of tension + a curiously light
tone can only equal one thing: mediocrity. Half
Twin achieves that handily, such that whatever
character or tension the film creates doesn't seem
to matter all that much.
Sometimes there's even too
much character; great pains are taken to explicate
the motives of even the most unlikable individuals,
presumably because the filmmakers want the characters
humanized. Maybe they are made slightly more human,
but given the heinous acts they're supposed to have
perpetrated, gaining sympathy seems to be asking too
much of the audience. None of the bad guys in this
film are charismatic or developed enough to be tragic
or sympathetic, meaning their personal pains are merely
distracting and not that interesting. The actors could
be blamed, though it may be more appropriate to blame
the filmmakers. Half Twin is ultimately very
bland, and is only better than expected because expectations
are rock-bottom already. Here's another relative measure:
Half Twin isn't bad for a Tony Leung Hung-Wah
movie. That may not mean much, but it's something.