Japanese filmmaker Kenji Uchida hit the jackpot when he wrote and directed in 2012 “Key of Life”, a clever, enjoyable and very applicable story of identity-swap between a looser and a sleek professional assassin, played by the star Teruyuki Kagawa. The film in fact, beside winning a bunch of awards, had a South Korean remake in 2015, “Lucky Key” starring the uber-popular Yoo Hae-jin in the lead role, and this year, a Chinese reboot opened successfully across China on Spring Festival (Chinese New Year Holiday), one of the busiest moviegoing periods in China, grossing a record 7.8 billion yuan only in the festival days. This newest big budget version is directed by Xiaozhi Rao after his 2018's “A Cool Fish” featuring no other than Hong Kong icon and superstar Andy Lau (also credited as executive producer ) and Xiao Yang, recently seen in “Sheep Without A Shepherd”.
Endgame is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival
Like a classic noir, the film opens with a gruesome assassination in a flickering neon lit carpark, under a torrential rain. The assassin is the suave and Bond-esque Zhou Quan (Andy Lau Tak-Wah) a.k.a. “Mr. Z” who stuffs the corpse in the boot of his pristine Jaguar and drives away as nothing has happened. At the same time, in a lousy and messy apartment, an unsuccessful actor Chen Xiaomeng (Xiao Yang) burdened with debts and a failed love story, decides to end his life. But his clumsy attempt to hung himself resolves in a snapped cord and a graceless fall on the floor. Soon after, these two never-more-different men cross path in a public bath house where Zhou Quan wants to get rid of blood traces and Chen is trying to scrounge a bath with an almost expired voucher. When Zhou Quan slips theatrically on a stray soap bar, hitting his head and losing consciousness as well as memory, Chen sees the opportunity to start afresh and quickly swap their locker's keys. What Chen doesn't know is that together with a flashy wristwatch, car and abundant cash, he is taking over also Zhou Quan's high-specialistic profession and that more killing commissions are on the way to him.
In the meantime, the amnesiac Zhou Quan thinks he is a penniless and suicidal actor called Chen Xiaomeng and with much humbleness he embraces his new identity and actively tries to fix its messy life, with the help of single mum Li Xiang (Wan Qian). Diligently taking notes of his surrounding and his feelings, he works hard waiting to regain his memory and when that happens, it is pretty shocking. Now Zhou Quan must stop the endless stream of troubles that clumsy Chen has caused to his “career” and try to calm down his angry client Hui Hui (Huang Xiaolei).
Likewise its predecessors, in the first half, “Endgame” sets up effectively the ground for the fun to come, with a neat and entertaining mise en place of swapped identities, where the two stars give their best, one showing how his highly efficient and slightly OCD mind can be effectively applied to the life of an underdog, the other demonstrating how money and a fresh start mean nothing on the wrong person. Consequently, the moment Zhou Quan recovers his memory and identity should be when the real fun starts. However, from this point onwards, the script starts to lose grip, split in too many subplots and twists, and ultimately gets lost on a very Chinese tangent, entangling itself in an attempted moral safety-net for the characters. It isn't helped by the nowadays customary running time of 2 hours (sigh) for a commercial blockbuster, as if you are buying entertainment by the kilo. It wasn't necessary and the narration's twists and turns become a bit tiresome towards the dragged end.
To save the day and keep the movie together, it certainly helps Andy Lau's nuanced performance. It is a real pleasure to watch him jumping from the sophisticated, sleek assassin straight out of a cool Rolex commercial to the modest, humble and good-natured amnesiac self, showing how his deepest traits pan out in a different environment. Moreover, it's quite funny to see him in Chen's shoes, playing some little roles as an extra on the set of those very movies in which the real Andy Lau would be the protagonist. Ironically, after losing his memory he reads on his (Chen's) ID he is 33 years old and wonders if he looks “a bit” older than that, maybe hinting to the legendary rust-proof appearance of the almost 60-year-old star. Xiao Yang is funny and engaging but sometimes verging too much on the caricature and he is never given a chance in the plot to do something else but the clown.
The tech credits are all excellent, as expected in a big budget Lunar New Year movie. The cinematography and the set design reproduce with tongue in cheek the classic thriller atmosphere with lots of red lights and typical mob meetings around a hot pot dinner, where Huang Xiaolei's histrionic performance really shines. Particularly atmospheric is the small dismissed theatre where the grand finale is staged. Little funny tails of the story are planted within the end credits so don't rush away. And if you are wondering whether the culprits will be appropriately punished after the “The End” title card (as you certainly do, watching a comedy-crime movie!) don't panic, in the end credits a series of – unintentionally – hilarious statements will make sure you know exactly what charges, what laws and what punishments have been applied to each of the character of the film.
All in all, “Endgame” has some script problems in the second half that would have been easily discounted with a shorter and tighter editing. However, it is still an entertaining and amusing star-studded holiday movie to be enjoyed at the appropriate time.
