Hu die fei

This film is painfully, offensively bad. I was stunned that this was a Johnny To film, since he's a director of no small talent when it comes to crime dramas and gangster films. But clearly, romance is not his forte.

The script was the kind of amateurish glop you'd expect from a smitten teenage girl. Void of real drama, the attempts at character development were silly and pointless. Most scenes consisted of endless discussions between the leads about what might have been, or emotionally overwrought reactions to events. The dialog was agonizing to experience, and in constant violation of the "show, don't tell" rule of writing by having characters speak aloud lines that should have been subtext.

And then there's the music; the ugly, ugly music. Imagine drowning in sweet green cough syrup, choking on mouthfuls of saccharine while your brain is numbed into a surreal dextromethorphan haze. It's awful beyond description, wielded like a sonic sledgehammer in every single scene as a desperate attempt to manufacture emotion where none exists. Sawing one's ears off with a steak knife is the only appropriate response.

If you see a copy of this film, run screaming in the opposite direction as if it were a shattered vial of the Ebola virus -- exposure WILL cause you to vomit blood.