Asian Movie Review: Control (控制, 2013)

I caught a screening of "Control" by Kenneth Bi and starring Daniel Wu and Yao Chen on opening day in HK two weeks ago. Despite being shot in HK (as a Mainland co-production), we got the film almost two months after it opened in China. :-/

Control is billed as Chinese cinema's first attempt at 'Film Noir' sci fi.   It's set in the future in a futuristic anonymous Chinese city.  The movie never says exactly when, where, or even in what country (but it looks Hong Kong in a lot of the exterior scenes).     The movie opens with some impressive CG cityscapes, with a few nifty gadgets showing up in the story, but for the most part the futurism part is irrelevant to the story itself (in fact once they leave the characters' work places and homes, it looks like they're just driving around the same New Territories that we have today... but hypothetically they could be driving around in vintage cars and it just hasn't changed that much compared to now. :-P

Besides the setting, another unique feature of the film is that the story is based on Jack Messitt's screenplay and translated into Chinese by Bi who wrote and directed "Control". 

The premise of the film is a man who's being blackmailed into committing crimes by an unseen omnipotent villain who talks to him only by phone and watches him using the ubiquitous cameras in our future world.    So how does a naive insurance salesman get out of this predicament?  that’s why you need to watch.   Daniel Wu plays the insurance salesman and Yao Chen plays his ex-gf who gets looped into the blackmail crime spree by the evil Voice.  Simon Yam plays the gangster who Daniel’s been forced to rip-off who comes looking for his $$$ and isn’t sure he buys this elaborate story of anonymous blackmail. 

The film is ambitious and for the most part keeps you entertained as it unfolds the story.  I found myself enjoying it for the most part, as it kept me guessing with some intentional plot twists that leave you at the end wanting to go back and rematch it like “The Sixth Sense” to see if you can see the hidden signs you missed the first time around.

Usually that’s a good thing… usually it means the director did a really of leading you up to a point and leaves it up to you to figure out what was REALLY going on the whole time.  One of the minuses of this film is that it spoon-feeds you ‘reveal’ in a 10+ minute epilogue that is a bit TOO neat and clean, to the point of shattering any credulity…  (its one of those things if you tried to work through the film from the start knowing the reveal, it absolutely does not make any logical sense.  Should have just left it as a head scratcher and ended the movie instead of dragging us through a ‘suspension of disbelieve’ shattering step by step review.  

Another minus is the fact that the ‘futurism’ is uneven through the movie.  In one scene the city is something out of the 22nd century and then in another scene people are driving around in cars from the late 90’s.  The only consistently ‘future’ thing is the ubiquitous cell phone Daniel uses.   

Anyway, despite the issues raised, overall I enjoyed the film. I liked Yao Chen and I thought Simon Yam’s portrayal of the Triad boss, while easy for him, was entertaining to me.  I enjoyed the random cameo by 24Herbs too! 

Very solid 6/10.   Give them an extra point or two on top of that for trying to be original in a market that is severely lacking in originality.  ;-)