Review: ‘A Place Called Silence’ (2024), starring Eric Wang, Janine Chang, Francis Ng and Wang Shengdi

August 12, 2024

by Carla Hay

Wang Shengdi in “A Place Called Silence” (Photo courtesy of Niu Vision Media)

“A Place Called Silence” (2024)

Directed by Sam Quah

Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2006 (with some flashbacks to 2005), the dramatic film “A Place Called Silence” (a remake of the 2022 movie of the same name) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A serial killer goes after people who are connected in some way to a mute girl in high school. 

Culture Audience: “A Place Called Silence” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and the original version of the movie, but this remake is full of plot holes and unrealistic scenarios with substandard performances.

Janine Chang in “A Place Called Silence” (Photo courtesy of Niu Vision Media)

“A Place Called Silence” is a very unnecessary remake of the 2022 thriller of the same name. In this story about a serial killer whose targets include teenage bullies, the 2024 sloppily edited version of the movie has ridiculous plot twists with exaggerated acting. In fact, the last 30 minutes of the two-hour “A Place Called Silence” could be considered an unintentional comedy because of how the movie expects viewers to believe all the idiotic things that are on display, like a parody of a bad movie.

Sam Quah wrote and directed both versions of “A Place Called Silence.” The 2022 version takes place in Malaysia. The 2024 version takes place in China. The timeline for the 2024 version of “A Place Called Silence” is set mostly in 2006 in an unnamed Chinese city, but there are some flashbacks to 2005.

Near the beginning of 2024’s “A Place Called Silence,” it’s mentioned that the city was devastated by a tsunami that took place in 2005. Much of the movie’s plot is centered on Jing Hwa High School, a school for girls. The beginning of the movie shows the school having a memorial assembly to pay tribute to the school’s students and employees who died in the tsunami.

It isn’t long before it’s shown that the school has a clique of about six to eight “mean girl” bullies. These bullies have taken a mute student named Chen Yutong, nicknamed Tong (played by Wang Shengdi), to an empty classroom, where they have hung her up on a wall and are smearing gel glue all over her face and body. The leader of these hateful girls is Zhong Xiaoqing (played by Gu Mingyi), who seems to be the one to come up with the plans to inflict terror on the bullies’ victims.

A Jing Hwa High School teacher named Mrs. Zhang (played by Cheng Mo), who is unaware of this particular physical assault, is very concerned about Tong’s safety because she knows that Tong has gotten verbal bullying by this “mean girl” clique. Mrs. Zhang tells the school’s principal Au Ziumin (played by Liu Xiaohai), who doesn’t seem to want to get involved. He thinks that any bullying that’s going on is harmless teasing that isn’t serious enough to punish the bullies.

Tong manages to escape from the bullies who attacked her. However, three of the girls (including Xiaoqing) involved in this attack go missing. The movie shows that the serial killer, who wears a hooded raincoat, has been killing these “mean girls,” one by one, usually by bludgeoning them to death with a sledgehammer. The killer’s identity is revealed in the last third of the movie, but that revelation still has some twists.

Tong is an only child who lives with her widowed mother Li Han (played by Janine Chang) in a shabby apartment building. Han is very protective of Tong, but Han has some secrets that some people might or might not know. One of the reasons why Tong is taunted at school is because Han used to be an accountant, but Han now works as a janitor at the school. It’s explained in the movie why this family has had a change in financial fortunes.

Some other characters play pivotal roles in the movie’s plot, which gets annoyingly convoluted as it lurches along to a messy ending. Dai Guodong (played by Francis Ng) is the police detective in charge of the murder investigation. Lin Zaifu (played by Eric Wang) is an introverted former school employee whose teenage daughter Lin Huijun (played by Xu Jiao, seen in flashback scenes) died in 2005. Mrs. Xu (played by Cai Ming) is the shrill and meddling landlord for Huijun.

“A Place Called Silence” could have been a much better movie if it didn’t try to cram in so many “surprises” in the last 30 minutes of the film. The action scenes—particularly those involving a car chase and kidnapping—are poorly conceived and look very fake. Even worse is a suicide scene that looks extremely phony and exploitative.

There’s a mid-credits scene that’s supposed to add the “shocking” reveals in the plot, but it comes across as pretentious and contrived. “A Place Called Silence” tries to have artsy cinematography, but a stylish-looking movie is just superficial if the story is garbage, the film editing is incoherent, and the performances are not impressive. The 2024 version of “A Place Called Silence” is yet another remake that didn’t make improvements from the original film and instead made things worse.

Niu Vision Media released “A Place Called Silence” in select U.S. cinemas on August 2, 2024. The movie was released in China on July 3, 2024.

Review: ‘Customs Frontline,’ starring Jacky Cheung, Nicholas Tse, Karena Lam, Cya Liu and Francis Ng

July 29, 2024

by Carla Hay

Nicholas Tse in “Customs Frontline” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)

“Customs Frontline”

Directed by Herman Yau

Cantonese with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Hong Kong and in Africa, the action film “Customs Frontline” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with some white people and black people) portraying the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department agents battle against a group of weapons smugglers led by mysterious and ruthless dealer.  

Culture Audience: “Customs Frontline” will appeal primarily to people are fans of the movies headliners and action movies with mindless plots.

Jacky Cheung in “Customs Frontline” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)

Awkward acting, a poorly written screenplay and an overcrowded cast make “Customs Frontline” a dud. This story about customs officials versus criminal smugglers tries to do too much but ends up with very little meaning. All the action scenes look fake.

Directed by Herman Yau, “Customs Frontline” (formerly titled “War Customised”) has almost no imagination because the outcome and the weak plot twists can be easily predicted long before they’re shown on screen. Eric Lee and Erica Li wrote the unimpressive screenplay, which is populated with hollow characters and dull dialogue. Making things worse, most of the acting in the movie is atrocious.

“Customs Frontline” tells the story of Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department agents going on the hunt for an elusive and mysterious arms smuggler named Dr. Raw (played by Amanda Strang), whose arsenal ranges from guns to bombs to submarines with missiles. Strang’s stiff and vacant acting as Dr. Raw is so pitifully bad, this character is unconvincing as someone who would even know how to use a toy gun, let alone have the type of massive supply of weapons that is supposed to make her a dangerous terrorist. And for a chief villain, Dr. Raw is not in the movie as much as you think she might be.

Instead, “Customs Frontline” has mostly generic and anonymous goons in showdowns with the customs agents. The movie is overpopulated with unnecessary characters who show up and then disappear in subplots that go nowhere. And needless to say, many scenes in this movie look rushed and jumbled.

The “heroes” of the story are a disjointed group of agents. Chow Ching-lai (played by Nicholas Tse) is the principled protagonist, whose boss and mentor Cheung Wan-nam (played by Jacky Cheung) has bipolar disorder. The movie’s depiction of this mental illness is problematic for how it plays up the worst clichés of bipolar disorder by having a lot of over-exaggerated acting.

A flashback scene shows a doctor telling Wan-nam that Wan-nam has a high EQ (emotional quotient, also known as emotional intelligence), but Wan-nam has bipolar disorder where he can self-harm when he’s in a manic state. And sure enough, the movie shows some of this self-harm later when Wan-nam gets some bad news and deliberately presses a hot iron on his left shoulder to burn himself. The self-harm gets worse.

Wan-nam’s girlfriend is Athena Siu (played by Karena Lam), who is the custom department’s assistant commissioner of customs and excise. Wan-nam’s demanding and disrespectful boss is Kwok Chi-keung (played by Francis Ng), the custom department’s assistant commissioner, who often belittles Wan-man. There are multiple scenes where Wan-nam gripes about Chi-keung to Athena, and they try to think of ways to make Wan-nam’s life easier on the job. “I’ll beat Kwok for you,” Athena tells Wan-nam.

Early on in the movie, agents from Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department find a unaccounted-for cargo ship that has arrived from Thailand and is filled with weapons that are believed to be stolen. When the agents go to investigate the ship, they find out too late that it’s a trap set by Dr. Raw. Several customs agents are killed by Dr. Raw’s thugs in this ambush, including Ching-lai’s ex-gilfriend Katie (played by Michelle Wai). By the way, do these “hero” customs agents know how to date anyone who isn’t a co-worker?

Not long after this massacre, a Thai intelligence officer named Ying (played by Michelle Wai) arrives from Thailand to investigate. She teams up with Ching-lai to do some undercover work. The movie shows them posing as journalists in Africa, where they visit the fictional country of Lokumoa and interview leaders who tell them about how dangerous illegal arms have been to the people in their country. Note to the “Customs Frontline” filmmakers: You don’t have to pretend to be a journalist to find out that information.

While in Africa, Yin and Ching-lai suddenly get caught in an explosion attack. It’s a laughably terrible scene with sloppy editing. At one point, Dr. Raw is hiding out in Egypt, where she utters more ridiculous lines while dressed as if she’s going to business cocktail party. Scene after scene is just all time-wasting nonsense that are often just an excuse to have mindless shoot-outs, explosions, ship crashes and fist fights.

During one of these fights, an opponent of Ching-lai asks him, “Why are you doing this?” He replies in a monotone voice, “It’s my duty.” When the opponent gets wheeled away by a medical responder, the opponent asks Ching-lai: “Why did you save me?” Ching-lai says in the same flat voice: “It’s my duty.” You can see better acting in a lot video games with computer-generated image characters.

“Customs Frontline” is loud and bombastic in all the wrong ways because the movie just isn’t interesting and is actually quite lazy when it comes to the story. The movie’s characters might as well be robots because they have the personalities of monotonous robots, except for the horrible depiction of Wan-nam’s bipolar disorder. “Customs Frontline” is one of those movies that is unlikely to be remembered by most people who see it unless anyone is unfortunate enough to get a headache from watching this noisy mess.

Well Go USA released “Customs Frontline” on July 19, 2024. The movie was released in Hong Kong on July 5, 2024.

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