Billed as an action-loaded gangster flick, Niu Chen-zer’s (鈕承澤) Monga (艋舺) stars some of Taiwan’s brightest young things, including Ethan Ruan (阮經天) and Mark Chao (趙又廷).
With a stellar cast and entertaining storyline that weaves together action and drama, the film should do well with younger audience members who like to view the underworld through rose-tinted glasses.
Set in 1980s Bangka, otherwise known as Manka, an old Taipei borough that is now part of the city’s Wanhua District (萬華), the movie opens with transfer student Mosquito (Chao) doing battle with school bullies. The following day, a high school gang comprised of Hoklo-speakers approaches Mosquito and recruits him.
Zhilong (Rhydian Vaughan), whose father Geta (Ma Ru-long) is a well-respected underworld kingpin, leads the gang of five. Fellow gang member Monk (Ruan), however, is the most ruthless. Together they skip class and spend their days getting into street fights, going clubbing and wooing girls.
With their carefree innocence, the gang members seem invincible, until one night a spot of street justice accidentally leads to murder.
Meanwhile, a gang of Mainlanders from another area attempts to muscle in on the action in Bangka by befriending Wenqian (Jason Wang, 王識賢) a member of a rival gang. The outsiders conspire to take out Bangka’s gang bosses, including Zhilong’s father, and approach Monk to undertake the slayings, who obliges.
Mosquito uncovers Monk’s betrayal, and the scene is set for a bloody showdown.
Niu said he wanted to craft a uniquely Taiwanese gangster flick. Visually, the director has achieved his goal as the characters in the film look like archetypal taike (台客) with their floral print shirts, bell-bottoms and flip-flops.
The movie’s romanticism is palpable — it is more a paean to times gone than a pure gangster flick. Friendship, the innocence of youth and loyalty take precedence over scheming and plotting, and the violence is rendered lyrically rather than realistically. The opening street fight, which involves more than 100 extras, is played out like a ballet set against the score composed by Sandee Chen (陳珊妮).
Unlike Niu’s semi-autobiographical feature debut What On Earth Have I Done Wrong?! (情非得已之生存之道), Monga’s scale and structure require storytelling skills that the director has yet to master. The narrative is uneven and frequently plagued with dull dialogue. Tensions mostly dissolve as the characters’ conflicting emotions come across as more constructed than heartfelt.
One exception is Monk, who is secretly in love with Zhilong, played by British-Taiwanese actor Vaughan. Ruan injects his role with layers of emotion that elicit sympathy for a man torn between love and revenge.
The entire saga involving the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to produce plot twists at such a rapid pace that fiction publishers would throw it out for being ridiculously improbable. This past week was particularly bizarre, but surprisingly the press has almost entirely ignored a big story that could have serious national security implications and instead focused on a series of salacious bombshell allegations. Ko is currently being held incommunicado by prosecutors while several criminal investigations are ongoing on allegations of bribery and stealing campaign funds. This last week for reasons unknown Ko completely shaved
Gabriel Gatehouse only got back from Florida a few minutes ago. His wheeled suitcase is still in the hallway of his London home. He was out there covering the US election for Channel 4 News and has had very little sleep, he says, but you’d never guess it from his twinkle-eyed sprightliness. His original plan was to try to get into Donald Trump’s election party at Mar-a-Lago, he tells me as he makes us each an espresso, but his contact told him to forget it; it was full, “and you don’t blag your way in when the guy’s survived two
The self-destructive protest vote in January that put the pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) side in control of the legislature continues to be a gift that just keeps on giving to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Last week legislation was introduced by KMT Legislator Weng Hsiao-lin (翁曉玲) that would amend Article 9-3 of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) to permit retired and serving (!) military personnel to participate in “united front” (統戰) activities. Since the purpose of those activities is to promote annexation of Taiwan to the PRC, legislators
Nov. 18 to Nov. 24 Led by a headman named Dika, 16 indigenous Siraya from Sinkan Village, in what is today’s Tainan, traveled to Japan and met with the shogun in the summer of 1627. They reportedly offered sovereignty to the emperor. This greatly alarmed the Dutch, who were allies of the village. They had set up headquarters on land purchased from the Sinkan two years earlier and protected the community from aggressive actions by their more powerful rivals from Mattau Village. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) had been embroiled in a bitter trade dispute with Japan, and they believed
RSS