Not long after Zack Snyder’s Justice League version is released, another one of his works is out to the public this year too. It is ‘Army of the Dead’, a zombie heist film that follows a group of soldiers who plan a Las Vegas casino heist amid a zombie apocalypse. The film starred Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Theo Rossi, etc.
It is a fairly entertaining and enjoyable zombie movie to watch especially on a comfortable Saturday’s night at home. We have got to spend most of our time now at home again due to the current ‘heightened alert’ of Phase 2 reopening in Singapore which saw increased number of daily Covid-19 cases in the community and more restrictions kicking in including ban on dining-in.
Let’s get back to the movie. The gore is there, the visuals are great and the actions are cool. However, the movie is lacking emotional punch extensively; I couldn’t feel the characters including the story arc between the main lead, Ward with his estranged daughter. The runtime of the movie is also extremely long (it’s nearly 2 hour and 30 minutes long, untypical for a zombie movie). I have to skip some of the unnecessary scenes.
Out of 10 points, I would rate ‘Army of the Dead’ a total of 7.1. It’s stylish and quite entertaining but even with a ‘zombie tiger’ in it, it still hasn’t manage to cross the line yet.
Recently, I have been watching three TVB series concurrently; ‘Shadow of Justice’, ‘Sinister Beings’ and ‘AI Romantic’. As mentioned earlier, more time at home means more time for movies and TV series. The first of out of the three to end is ‘Shadow of Justice’ (伙記辦大事), a 32-episode crime drama starring two TV kings, Bobby Au and Joe Ma. The drama also starred Joey Meng, Jeanie Chan, Mat Yeung, Pierre Ngo, Winki Lai, Timothy Cheng, etc.
I am purely disappointed with this drama. I am expecting to see more screen time of Bobby showing his intelligence in solving difficult cases and his chemistry with Joey. However, the drama is overly filled with Jeanie Chan’s love relationship with Joe Ma and Mat Yeung. It looks like as though Bobby is just playing a supporting role here. Jeanie is more suited for supporting role and she isn’t ready for leading role yet. Instead, she was given the most amount of presence here in this drama and it mostly revolves on her absolutely boring love storyline with Joe and Mat (also not to mention the huge age gap between Joe Ma and her which made the whole thing awkward too).
Both Joe Ma and Joey Meng delivered nothing to the show, thanks to their very stiff expression and poor acting. I still can’t get over how Joe Ma can win best actor few years ago over Dicky Cheung in that year. The one who shines in this series is not any of the main actors but a veteran actor who played an antagonist role here as a pervert rich businessman. He is Timothy Cheng, and he nailed the role.
The story development of the drama is also a mess. Bobby get to have his own story arc, Joe Ma has its own part too and it is up until 20 episodes only then they start to bump into each other. It is way too slow. People are expecting to see the dramatic clash between the two and it only started after two third of the whole series. That’s lame.
Out of 10 points, I can only rate ‘Shadow of Justice’ a total of 5.0. The lowest rated drama of the year so far (also among the lowest in recent years). It is bad…near to being awful. The drama should be called ‘Shadow of Love’ rather than ‘Shadow of Justice’. Jeanie Chan’s super frustrating, awkward and boring love storyline occupied 80% of the whole series. The clash between Bobby and Joe came in too late. Poor use of Bobby Au’s talent. What a waste. I’m glad this series is finally over. ‘Sinister Beings’ and ‘AI Romantic’ are way better.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)