Movie review: The Viral Factor (2012)
‘The Viral Factor’ (逆戰) is the first 2012 released films that I have watched. It is so coincident that for this year and last year, the first film I watched for that respective year would have Jay Chou starring in it. I remember last year’s first film I watched is The Green Hornet, an English film, while ‘The Viral Factor’ for this year is a Chinese film.
I am very sure that most of us especially the Malaysians would go for ‘The Viral Factor’ because of the Asian superstar Jay Chou’s presence in the film, and also that the film is shoot mainly in Kuala Lumpur, my home city. I go for the similar reasons. The story revolves on two main characters, a cop (Jay Chou) and a criminal (Nicholas Tse) finding themselves as brothers and gets attached together once they are both involved into a crime of mutated virus production for wealth by the baddies.
The story looks quite interesting, but the main idea of the virus production is not carried well throughout the film. It is now appears only to be a supporting idea to the whole story, not the main one as suggested from the title of the film itself. The main portion of the film is dedicated mostly to those gun-firing, explosions, punching and fighting scenes, which makes the film one of the best contemporary action-thriller film from Hong Kong. However, I find those elements are too much, way too excessive, which just gives not much excitement to us anymore after for a while.
It seems that the director, Dante Lam loved those gun-firing and explosions acts a lot, until to the point that I find it is really too much and unnecessary, that finally dragged the movie to a total length of over 2 hours! This film would be best if it tooks around 1 hour and 30 minutes or a bit more only. Luckily, the story still goes in a fast-paced development and it’s good. The performance by the main casts are generally well and acceptable, and special credit to Nicholas Tse that performed very good in the film. I like his stunts and acts from the film, which is so interesting and exciting to watch. For Jay Chou, he is obviously improving but still not really good enough. (sorry for Jay Chou’s fans…I’m just saying the truth)
Yeah, it’s nice seeing the movie that most of it took place at famous places in Kuala Lumpur that me and many others can recognize; Putrajaya, Port Klang, Pavilion KL, Golden Triangle, KLCC skyline, KLIA, KL Sentral, KTM Headquarters Building, and an old abandoned building in Pudu. It is a bit over that in one particular scene, they keep on showing the exterior of the flight showing Air Asia and Malaysia flag where Jay Chou is in the plane flying to Kuala Lumpur. However, do you actually need to show us the visual of Petronas Twin Towers so many times just to let us know that the story took place in the city?! That is too much as well. There is actually no need for that; the audiences already know the place (even non-Malaysians knew that already after the name of the city is written earlier in the film).
Luckily, the movie is not just about action-packed scenes. For that aspects, it is no doubt that ‘The Viral Factor’ is one of the best. There are some other aspects added, those that touched on emotional values; like the family relationship which started and ended the film very well. The two brothers (Jay Chou and Nicholas Tse), whom are the highlight of the film had their own moments and stunts, which are distributed quite evenly too. The family story further strengthened the actions by the two brothers. It is just that the virus aspect of the film needs more depth by further elaborating on the potential of the newly-produced virus and its consequences. That can be quite an interesting approach, but the director definitely put it aside and just brings his guns and bombs out for massive explosive moments only. And the sound effect is edited to be very much exaggerated in many parts, especially from those explosive and fighting scenes, until to the point that I find it irritating to my ears in some moments.
So, overall, the film is brilliant in contemporary action-thriller aspect, but too heavy emphasis on that would neglect some other aspects, especially the virus element that brought up the title of the film. So, it’s good in one side, but not really that well on the other side. There are many languages spoken in the film too (Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay, English), since the casts are not all from a single country, promoting international participation to the film with support from Malaysian authority. But overall, this movie is definitely worth-watching, exciting with ample of explosive scenes with a beautiful backdrop of KL streets and skylines. Out of 10 points, I rate ‘The Viral Factor’ a total of 7.5. Another long movie review from me.
(This post is written days earlier and would/is be posted during Chinese New Year week to deal with the emptiness of update over my blog for this whole week long when I was not around, enjoying my trip over at India)
