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Film Review: Fresh off Markham (2024) by Kurt Yuen, Cyrus Lo, Trevor Choi

Fresh off Markham cast
"We are in North America. How hard is it to get a gun?"

The City of Markham is Canada’s most diverse city, with about half of the population coming to the community from outside of Canada, nearly 60 percent of residents speaking a first language other than English and 77.9 percent of residents identifying themselves as a visible minority. More than a third of the population are of Chinese descent, while almost 40% are East Asian. Three directors with roots to Hong Kong decided to place three interconnecting stories in this city.

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Shan, an immigrant in Canada has just been laid off from his job at a factory and is realizing that the company who brought him there to work were actually swindlers. Thus, it does not take much effort from a friend back home to get him into petty crime. And although the first ”job” goes well, when the two decide to rob a Japanese restaurant, all hell breaks loose. O’Shea Johnson is trying to make a living as an Uber driver in the area, and is obsessed with always getting 5 stars in the reviews he receives. One day, though, he happens to pick the two aforementioned as they are escaping the restaurant. If that was not enough, he was supposed to pick Circle Tam, a girl who proves to be an influencer, and who eventually realizes what is going on with the people sitting in the back. In the last chapter, Circle visits a luxury house in the area along with a realtor.

The comments of the film are its best asset. The issues immigrants face and particularly the companies that promise a land of plenty only to swindle people emerges as the most pointed one, but it is not the only. Permanent residency, finding a job, dealing with racism, which actually comes from all sides as the African-American O’Shea experiences, gun control and housing are all presented here, while being well embedded in the narrative. Also, in a rather refreshing approach to stories about immigrants of Chinese descent, the movie is not about their relationship with their families.

As is usually the case with omnibuses, even if “” is not exactly that, there are differences among the three parts that are not smoothed out in the movie, despite the interconnecting of the three stories. In that fashion, the first part is probably the best, but the truth remains that it would probably work better as a drama than a comedy, something that actually applies to the whole movie. The second part has a number of illogical coincidences, while what is happening with the injured one does not make sense at all. This part actually feels as if it was forcibly placed in the film, in order to present an additional non-Asian perspective. Lastly, the third part, which mostly consists of dialogue between Circle and the realtor, although interesting contextually, seems also disconnected from the rest. The finale, which is intensely inspired from “Parasite”, highlights the aforementioned to the highest degree.

Considering that the connection between the three parts is not ideal, even with the full circle of the ending, the editing does not emerge as particularly good, although the truth is that the three parts would be better off as stand alones than segments of the same film. Michael Maddeaux’s cinematography is quite good, capturing the various settings with realism, although the lighting and coloring frequently point towards a US TV production.

Among the actors, as Zhao Shan definitely stands out, both in the dramatic and the comedic scenes. as Circle Tam is also convincing in the role of the ‘privileged’ influencer while in the role of the immigration consultant steals the show in the two scenes she appears in the film.

“Fresh off Markham” presents a number of accurate comments with realism, but as a whole, emerges as production whose creators made a number of bad choices, resulting in a film that is essentially mediocre.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

Panagiotis (Panos) Kotzathanasis is a film critic and reviewer, specialized in Asian Cinema. He is the owner and administrator of Asian Movie Pulse, one of the biggest portals dealing with Asian cinema. He is a frequent writer in Hancinema, Taste of Cinema, and his texts can be found in a number of other publications including SIRP in Estonia, Film.sk in Slovakia, Asian Dialogue in the UK, Cinefil in Japan and Filmbuff in India.

Since 2019, he cooperates with Thessaloniki Cinematheque in Greece, curating various tributes to Asian cinema. He has participated, with video recordings and text, on a number of Asian movie releases, for Spectrum, Dekanalog and Error 4444. He has taken part as an expert on the Erasmus+ program, “Asian Cinema Education”, on the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course.

Apart from a member of FIPRESCI and the Greek Cinema Critics Association, he is also a member of NETPAC, the Hellenic Film Academy and the Online Film Critics Association.

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