Story:
In our modern time, in Hong Kong, lived a man named
Wisely and what this man like the most, except women,
is writing and investigating. One day, one of his friends
told him that something very strange happened to him
the previous night. When he was trying to sleep, some
weird noises came from the upper floor and that the
morning later the strange habitants of the upper room
moved out from the building in a hurry. These two strange
habitants consisted of an old man and a young lady with
her black cat. But the real scary thing about the story
is that they found intestine in the empty apartment.
After hearing this strange story, Wisely decided
that he needed to find the truth behind all this.
He will find more than he was expecting when he will
discover that the old man and the young girl are in
fact aliens from other space and the small black cat
is in fact the bodyguard of the girl. They are hiding
on planet Earth from another evil Alien who wants
to destroy them.
Review: Hong Kong movies are well known for
their imaginative large scale idea but because of
the lack of technology and money they usually make
these interesting ideas look sometime cheesy and stupid,
even if the whole movie is very entertaining. With
my personal experience, I know that common people
(Hollywood knowledge only) don't like HK movies because
they find them too cheesy and unbelievable. On the
other hand most of the people who enjoy HK movies
love this innovative and unserious aspects and that's
exactly what this movie is all about.
The Cat was directed by Lai-Choi Nam who also directed
The Seventh Curse and the well known classic movie
Story of Ricky. But unlike these two other movies,
instead of trying to find a way to shock the audience
with extreme gory scenes, The Cat centers more on
the Sci-Fi aspect of the story, kind of a non serious
HK X-Files if you want. But the movie still has that
special touch that makes you wonder where they always
find these crazy ideas.
The Cat doesn't have the most ingenious concept
ever and the story even looks more like a dumb pretext
to introduce you a very weird scene. Even if the story
is easy to follow, the biggest flaw of the movie is
the fact that there are a lot of unexplained elements
in the movie, especially about the nature of the aliens.
It's like the filmmaker didn't bother explain to the
audience the multiple why, when and how of the story.
I'm guessing that those who like their movie storyline
flawless wont be able to stand this movie but if you
don't mind the story that doesn't take things too
seriously, you will probably have a good time. Just
keep in mind that the story is rather a vehicle to
bring together the most unusual ideas you will ever
see in a Hong Kong Sci-fi movie. Like Peter likes
to tell me in these kinds of situation: "Don't
Ask!"
This is a B movie so don't expect the most incredible
actor performance ever. Most of the acting was kind
of cheesy and funny but I think that was a good thing,
a movie like that with a serious tone would have probably
ruined the whole thing. Out of all the characters,
the most interesting one was the main character Wisely,
he was a kind of modern action Sherlock Holmes. As
for the rest of the cast, they were mostly forgettable
characters unfortunately. The one who had some potential
was the Alien girl with her cat, but since there's
almost no info about her background or true nature,
it was kind of hard to really understand all of her
motivation and feeling.
Sci-fi, action, comedy and horror are elements that
a lot of Hong Kong movies have tried to mix together
and it seem that only a few directors have achieve
a successful result. In my opinion The Cat doesn't
belong in the successful category, of course it's
not a bad movie but I don't think that any of these
genres have been exploited to the max. Too many details
are unanswered in the Sci-fi aspect to really understand
it, the action is there but nothing that we have never
seen before, ok except the cat and dog fight. As for
the comedy and horror elements, both of them were
present but none of them really impressed me.
The special effects were probably the most interesting
thing, because of the very limited budget Im really
wondering how they manage to get all these effects
done. The most spectacular scene is of course that
much talked about scene were a cat (the Alien) and
a super dog fight each other. I wont say too many
details, but as many people before me have said, just
for this only scene makes a viewing of the movie worth
it. There are also a couple of nice gory scenes, consisting
of Alien eating human bodies and slimy unidentified
thing attacking humans. Most of the effects were good
for a low budget production, but don't expect to see
something like in Story of Ricky.
Even if the movie is far from being perfect it still
have some memorable moments and also contains enough
interesting elements to keep the interest of any HK
movie addict for a whole viewing. If you like Hong
Kong movies for their crazy ideas and concept, The
Cat is a movie you really have to see, but if you
are annoyed by the cheesy factor in HK movies, then
stay away from it at all cost.