Protege
(Andy Lau/Daniel Wu/Louis Koo/Zhang Jingchu/109 minutes)
This is a serious movie with an anti-drug message. The problem is that it never lets you forget that.
The characters all fulfil a specific role and they are clearly labelled as such on the DVD cover - pusher, wife, banker, protege, victim.
While Lau chews some scenery as the drug kingpin, Koo is a disaster in a buffoonish drug addict role and Anita Yuen is hardly given anything to do as Lau’s wife.
The pacing is as uneven as the performances. The most interesting sequences are those on the cooking and packing of the drugs. On the other hand, the scenes set in the Golden Triangle feel too much like a National Geographic special on drugs.
It could have ended on a truthful, albeit sombre and chilling, note but the film-makers opt for false optimism instead.
The DVD comes with an additional Cantonese audio track and a making-of that reveals one more sobering fact - of the world’s 60 billion people, 2 billion take drugs.
(ST)