For It Is Man's Number: fala chen

Showing posts with label fala chen. Show all posts

Sunday, 2 November 2025

Netflix And Chill: Ballad Of A Small Player (2025)

I don't want to be rude about Colin Farrell, someone I have loved onscreen more and more with every step he moved away from typical blockbuster lead roles, but I am more impressed with his role in Ballad Of A Small Player for his ability to portray what, at times, would seem to be a past incarnation of himself. Farrell has been sober for many years now, and massive congratulations to him for that, but he's been very open about the many wild nights in his past. I wondered if he was experiencing déjà vu here whenever his character would wake up groggy and anxious after some time spent spending too much money and drinking too much alcohol. I mention this not just because of the behaviour displayed onscreen. It's the tone. Ballad Of A Small Player is all about a man who believes that one lucky break is just around the corner, yet also knows that he is being driven by desperate addictive impulses that could just as easily lead to him dying before he gets the chance to see any uptick in his fortunes.

Farrell is Lord Doyle, if we're to believe how he presents himself. He's a gambler who enjoys placing large bets and living the high life. He's had a recent run of bad luck though, which forces those around him to place a timeline on some debts. Doyle encounters kindness and generosity from Dao Ming (Fala Chen), but he has to make a decision on whether to accept her help to move away from his life of gambling or to make use of her kindness to facilitate his path to that one big win he can sense heading his way. It doesn't help that he's also being watched by Blithe (Tilda Swinton), someone who has been tasked with tracking him down and reclaiming some major past debt.

Adapted into screenplay form from Lawrence Osborne's novel by Rowan Joffe, Ballad Of A Small Player actually has a lot in common with one or two other gambling films I could mention, but just mentioning those might allow you to start predicting how things will end for the main character. So I'm not going to do that. There's a whole lot of anxiety running throughout the film, and even any unexpected victories in the casinos feel fragile and temporary, considering the nature of the main character.

Director Edward Berger is three for three when it comes to the features that he's helmed over the past five years, and I'm keen to see if he can keep up this hot streak to put himself in contention for the director with the most consistently superb output throughout this decade. While it's ultimately a slightly lesser film than his previous two outings, being an inessential character piece, as opposed to a rumination on the hell of war or a murder mystery aiming to shake the pillars of Catholicism, Berger treats it with no less care. This is grandiose, operatic even, and every viewer is masterfully taken through a variety of ups and downs as if attached by a safety wire to some member of Cirque du Soleil.

Despite the occasional (apparent) lapse in his upper-class British accent, and nothing here is without an explanation, Farrell is superb in the lead role, all flop-sweat and faux-graciousness as he keeps looking around his environment for various escape routes and gambling opportunities. He's the star, and his charisma is put to great use throughout. It's impressive that Chen makes such a strong impression, considering how often she has to share the screen with Farrell while she's the calming presence to his manic aura. Swinton gives one of her fine supporting turns, and is especially delightful in the third act, and both Deanie Ip and Alex Jennings are worth mentioning as individuals who may succeed in tempting Farrell's character to make the one bet that finally destroys him.

I enjoyed this, I was stressed out by it, and I am conflicted by the ending, which is actually a better outcome than the one I expected. It's a small-scale and low-key film that feels huge and bombastic. It taps into that rollercoaster of highs and lows that I am sure every gambler knows is the rhythm of their life, for better or worse.

8/10

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Friday, 21 January 2022

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021)

The past couple of years have proven to be quite challenging for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as they have proven to be quite challenging to numerous movie productions and companies. But Marvel seemed to be in a more precarious position than most, already having many people voice their concern over where things would go after the massive success of the films that ended the superb, long-running, storyline that culminated in "the snap" from Thanos.

Let's not spend too much time worrying about them though. Despite a mixed reception, they have still spent the past couple of years releasing films like this one, Eternals, and Black Widow, and making a great mix of TV shows such as Loki, WandaVision, Captain America And The Winter Soldier, and Hawkeye. Whether you love or hate them, they keep making blockbuster entertainment with a consistent minimum standard of quality, in my view, and they keep managing to set things in place to give them many options of whatever path they choose to take in the years ahead.

Take this film, for example. This is another Marvel movie that now happily mixes in the magical and mythical with the sci-fi elements. It all starts when Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung) discovers ten mystical rings, allowing him eternal life and superpowers. He then meets, and falls in love with, a woman. Children are born. Love wins. Temporarily.
That happened some years ago. Back in the here and now, Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) is a bit of a loveable loser who enjoys spending time with his friend, Katy (Awkwafina). He's not special, at least not in the eyes of most people around him. That all changes when members of the Ten Rings, the army headed up by Wenwu, attack Shang-Chi, desperate to gain ownership of a pendant given to him by his mother. Shang-Chi immediately heads off to warn his sister, Xialing (Meng'er Zhang), because she has a similar pendant. They soon realise that their father, because Wenwu IS their father, wants the pendants to find the mystical village his deceased wife lived in, convinced that he can be with her once again. But the messages he is hearing are lies, delivered to his mind by something that needs his help to break free.

It's pretty redundant to review a decent Marvel movie nowadays. Obviously there are more interesting words to say about the best and worst of their output. They know what they're doing, they have a great team of people working on each film, and they often get their casting pretty perfect. Such is the case here. Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings may lose steam in the third act, where it suffers from that blockbuster mis-step of big CGI battling big CGI, but there's easily enough here to please fans of this kind of fare. The extended action sequences which have Shang-Chi battling the Ten Rings are the highlights, leaving the film a little adrift when nothing else can top them, but you also get some good humour and a nice running commentary on determinism and real power.

As good as Liu, Awkwafina, and Zhang are, and they are excellent (with both Liu and Zhang doing very well with the physical side of their roles), the real treat here is seeing the likes of Leung and Yeoh (for a second time) getting a small piece of that Marvel pie. It's also fun to see another small turn from Benedict Wong, reprising the character of Wong, and one other returning main character proved to be a very pleasant surprise, and had more of an involved role than the last time he was used onscreen in these movies. There's nobody doing bad work here, at all, but I do need to single out Florian Munteanu, who makes a strong impression as the aptly-named Razor Fist, a main henchman wielding a red-hot machete blade where his right hand should be.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton helped to write the screenplay with Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham, and the team work together well. They may have the might of Marvel behind/helping them, but there's nothing here that shows Cretton feeling out of his depth with his sudden leap from smaller fare such as Just Mercy, The Glass Castle, and Short Term 12. It might be easier to get this kind of thing right with a whole army of people ready to ensure you stay in line with the overall vision of the brand, but that is no guarantee that the end result will show that. This gets much more right than wrong.

The interconnectivity remains the best thing that Marvel worked on, however, and that's why I know so many people will already know whether or not they are going to watch this. If, like me, you have been on the complete journey so far then you can't just stop, cold turkey. Things keep being set up that you know will pay off, be it this year, next year, or maybe a decade down the line. If you managed to resist the allure of the polished MCU product when they were a bit less practiced at lining up all of their cinematic stepping stones then you checked out by the time you read the title of this review.

I really wish the final act had been better, but I can't deny that the rest worked well for me. And the fight sequences at least have a fluidity and choreography that puts them on par with the best of Hollywood martial arts (which is still, lest we forget, rarely on a par with actual martial arts depicted in non-Hollywood movies).

8/10