Ocean Flame

Original title: Yi ban hai shui, yi ban huo yan

2008
1h 38m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Wong Yiu was a very shameless person and a blackmailer until one day he met a waitress named Ni Chen. He thought Ni Chen was like any other girls that could be controlled by him, but her stu... Read allWong Yiu was a very shameless person and a blackmailer until one day he met a waitress named Ni Chen. He thought Ni Chen was like any other girls that could be controlled by him, but her stubbornness was way beyond his imagination. As time goes by, they both lost their ways and l... Read allWong Yiu was a very shameless person and a blackmailer until one day he met a waitress named Ni Chen. He thought Ni Chen was like any other girls that could be controlled by him, but her stubbornness was way beyond his imagination. As time goes by, they both lost their ways and losing themselves in the process. He was not as free as he once was. Insanity causes him to... Read all

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.1/10

477

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 7 nominations total

Photos

Storyline

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Did you know

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Connections
Version of Love the Hard Way (2001)

Soundtracks
Proverbs of Love
Music by Ta-Yu Lo
Lyrics by Wing-Keung Lo
Performed by Xiao Juan
[Ending Song]

User reviews3

Review

Featured review

9/10

Why do the good girls always want the bad boys?

I saw the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, under the title Ocean Flame, and I found the movie completely involving despite not being very uplifting. It's a film from Hong Kong about an innocent young woman who falls for a criminal.

Unless I missed it, I don't think the director was trying to say in any general way why some women are attracted to "bad boys". It seemed he was simply telling the story of two people who don't belong together, but get together regardless, and their affect on each other.

Fan Liao plays the bad guy and effects such a perfect bad boy smirk that most of the men in the audience will want to punch him in the face every moment he's on the screen. Monika Mok, playing the innocent who falls for the criminal, is astonishingly beautiful and is very convincing as a woman that men would be obsessed over. They enter into a dominance- submissive sexual relationship, but it always feels that underlying it they're in love with each other.

The movie is also interesting by giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the life of a criminal and his gang. I felt the movie took an unusual approach in that absent were any of the conventional attempts to explain away their criminality. None of them complains about their bad childhood or poverty or bad breaks. It's simply that they aren't nice people, they know they aren't nice people and they like not being nice people.

If the movie has any downside, it's that it may make you afraid of falling in love.