1/5 stars
Is a film a murder mystery by default when there are unsolved murders in its story? And does it necessarily qualify as a romance just because its two good-looking leads play lovers who are preoccupied with doing the silliest things for each other?
These are the questions that go through my wandering mind as I sit through As It Burns, a shambles of a suspense drama that decides to flaunt its big reveal not even halfway through its runtime, before wasting the rest of it on one of the least believable love stories in recent memory.
It opens intriguingly enough when service station worker Lo Chi-fung (Jasper Liu Yi-hao) meets his girlfriend, Lam Yam (Stephy Tang Lai-yan), for dinner, only to leave her behind when he receives some cryptic messages from Yin Ching, his high-school lover when the two were still living in their backward hometown.
After tailing Lo to a nightclub and rightly figuring out what’s going on, Lam angrily leaves on her own. A gas explosion occurs in the apartment of Yin later that night, and a charred body believed to be hers is found at the scene.
As the police officer in charge, Ngai (Ray Lui Leung-wai) and his associate Lai (Gladys Li Ching-kwan) quickly put together that Yin has been engaged to a man whose wealthy family despise her.
Ngai also happens to remember Lo and Yin from a fire 12 years ago in which Yin’s mother burned to death.
The main conceit of As It Burns is that both Lam and Yin are played by Tang and they, of course, look and even sound exactly the same. But if that seems bizarre enough, wait until you find out about the motives behind the murders, which are at once arbitrary and laughably ridiculous.
Directed by Lee Po-cheung (Gangster Payday) from a script by Lui Koon-nam and Ku Yee-lai, this adaptation of a Chinese web novel has plenty of compelling elements going for it: a star-crossed romance, identity swap and cold-blooded murder. It’s a surprise how dreary, illogical and pointless everything feels once they’re put together.
Meanwhile, the best that can be said about Tang is that she has shown great courage in taking up the dual roles; while they might have appeared psychologically complex on paper, both Yim and Lam come across as unremittingly ludicrous creations on the big screen.
For all her efforts, this is not a performance to remember for the Hong Kong actress.