Machi Action
Jeff Chang
Remember those cheesy Japanese live-action series with a hero who transforms into a suited-up warrior in order to do battle with all manner of monsters?
Machi Action clearly has a soft spot for those shows and some of the scenes showing how the fictitious Taiwanese series Superhero Fly is filmed can be quite fun.
Mostly, though, the film flounders about like a clumsy monster with no clue what it wants to achieve.
Chen Bo-lin is the nice-guy actor, Tie-nan (literally “iron man”), who plays Fly.
Cast adrift after a new superhero, Face (Owodog), takes his place, Tie-nan goes from hawking dubious products on television to, inadvertently, signing up for a porn flick.
The scattershot film even has a tearjerker melodrama skulking about on the edges as there are flashbacks to Tie-nan as a child, acting as a superhero to cheer up his seriously ill younger brother.
It seemed like a fun film to make, judging from the outtakes, but it was not a fun film to watch.
(ST)