Integrity (Alan Mak)

[Stay Puft]

LIAN ZHENG FENG YUN / INTEGRITY
Dir. Alan Mak



IMDb page

[Stay Puft]

I voted nay this time and I meant it.

This is pretty fucking dull. The setup is decent enough, the ingredients are there, but damn, Alan Mak just doesn't make any of it work. The details of the criminal conspiracy become increasingly uninvolving as the film drip-feeds flashbacks that are meant to flesh out and recontextualize character dynamics, but the characters are poorly written, the romance between the two leads is clumsy, shoehorned and lacking chemistry, AND THEN Mak basically drives his entire narrative straight over a cliff, crashing it into that ridiculous moment in Final Fantasy VIII when everybody realizes they grew up together in the same orphanage. I won't elaborate on that so just take my word for it. It's bad.

The best/worst part is that one of the flashbacks features de-aging CGI and OMG can we please fucking stop with this. Sean Lau is transformed into a sentient wax sculpture whose skin looks like it's threatening to slide off his skull at any moment. In retrospect, it's probably the only interesting thing that actually happens at any point of this.

It's supposedly the first part of a planned trilogy and lol gtfo.