Project Gutenberg

Hugely invested, super casting, the movie should have been a classic action film. The acting of Chow is beyond doubt fantastic. Aaron, to me, is the first movie that showcase his best actor acting skill. All his previous movie is lawyer or police officer. This role here as a villian gives him ample chance for applying his already matured acting ability. Female lead is not first line actress in television. But she is surprisingly able to carry her role quite well together with the 2 male superstar.

The plot of the movie is not in par with the super casting. The story in the first half is ok. But towards the second half the storyline is a bit loosened, losing the excitement that the first half is carrying. Scenes of killing are excessive and unnecessary. It is as if the killing scene is added only for the purpose of showing off Chow's previous hero role in movies. It is not in line with the original plot where Chow should never be caught.

Otherwise the film is on the whole above standard and worth seeing. It is my impression wherever Chow is present in movie, the movie would be biased towards showing off his hero quality. And hence the continuity of the story is destroyed ans unnecssary scenes are added. This is the cost of seeing Chow in movie.

Not being prejudiced but since I don't know many of good Chinese movies this one is for once a good action movie with an excellent cast. The story might be déjà-vu but nonetheless it's an entertaining movie with a fair amount of twists and turns, some good action scenes, and for a movie of this length never boring moments. In China they counterfeit about anything they want and watching them counterfeiting the American dollar is an interesting story to watch. Chow Yen Fa is the most famous actor of the cast, at least to us occidentals, but the rest of the cast did also a good job with their characters. For once a Hong Kong production that felt right, without any overacting like we're sometimes used to when it's an Asian movie.

'Project Gutenberg' is a wonderful throw back to the heady days of the H.K action, thriller, which of course made Chow Yun Fat a major superstar. This modern version of those 80's John Woo classics, is both exciting and vital; though unfortunately only in select parts. I found the story overtly complex and there were just too many plot twists (for my liking); that in the end I welcomed the concluding finale.

This turned out better than I expected actually. Although some reviewers had mentioned that it's a copy of 1995's "The Usual Suspects" but nevertheless it's still a great plot. Almost everything in this movie is worth complimenting. Great cinematography effects, the music, the acting, etc. Except that the movie was indeed a bit slow at some scenes. Go and watch it in cinema, the film is worth seeing.

Obviously, the basic structure of the whole story comes from Bryan Singer's "The Usual Suspects" in 1995, but the focus of the former is the shock when the puzzle was revealed. The focus of this film is to expose the characters. Therefore, if the audience does not overstate the specific behavior of the scriptwriter in the process of writing the script, the two films actually have their own wonderful points. In addition, the surface story of the Hong Kong-style crime film really maintains the entertainment effect in the first half of the film, and Chow Yun-fat's highly romantic performance is actually a kind of figurative externalization of the character, which can be understood as an extension of the theme of the story.