Pretty Good

A Major Disappointment

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This film is about a young Chinese man in Beijing, who got inspired by a male prostitute to become a male prostitute.This film is bad. I don't normally mind low budgets, but in this film it really hurted me to watch it. The filmmakers did not even have appropriately wide angle lens to film most scenes, so most of the time, we could not even see the characters on the screen properly. Take the music choosing scene for example, the guy who wanted to choose music was at the edge of the screen. Only his face could be shown, not even the ears could be seen.Another big problem is that they often filmed it against bright light, such as against a window of a room. The resultant effect was that only shadows could be seen. The third major problem was that the background music was highly annoying. It consisted of weird sounds, which was totally out of place with the film. A further problem was that the film was inundated with totally irrelevant scenes, such as people playing Tai Chi on a bridge or the traffic on a motorway.This film seemed more like a psychotic experiment. Avoid this film like the Black Death!

The land of the Sleeping Dragon has been given license to make movies. This particular film has made the circuit and has been touted by many as Avante guard. The director Cul Zi en has crafted his film to promote cinematic interest and mounting international concern for one of China's fastest growing problems, male prostitution. The film itself is, by western standards, ill conceived and poorly constructed. Furthermore, it proves an ill woven tapestry of minor characters, spectral images, philosophical dialogs and a tangled message which has viewers wondering, if they are in the wrong theater. Lacing a shadowy musical composer who's role and purpose is never fully explained, with that of an elder brother, who's role is equally sketchy at best is confusing enough. His aim is? To save his younger brother from the brutal streets of Bejing. What little is understood of Cul Zi en's message is clear if one is on medication, but the options of a boy prostitutes in any country is doubtful at best. Sandwiched between overt poverty, harsh imprisonment, armies of religious zealots and the mounting problems of a ambivalent nation, prostitution, like any vice, becomes morally offensive, but a necessary evil. The film, like it's message, is destined for the shelves in the library of humanity.

The cover notes on the HK DVD release describe the writer and director of this film, Cui Zi En, as probably China's most independent and daring filmmaker. On the evidence of this work, I have to disagree. You will have to go a long way to find another film that offers so little. An amateur cast delivering stilted dialog and filmed by a hand-held camera, made almost unwatchable by the lack of anything but ambient lighting, plus long, long scenes where nothing happens. In particular, it is this last aspect that highlights the fact that this filmmaker has little to say; there is no justification for having scenes where characters just wonder round a park for 2 or more minutes for no particular reason. This film has a running time of 80 minutes. Watch this and you'll swear that time has stood still. Avoid like the plague.

Deplorably boring film consisting mostly of dialog supplemented with extended waste of film lingering on unrelated scenes of a guy chasing a dog through a park apparently intended to extend length of film to a required viewing time.Filming is of poor quality, with no compensation for backlit scenes, resulting in blacked-out underexposed 'actors.'Lots of religious Christian bible thumping comparisons of scriptural condemnations of homosexuality. I purchased this as an addition to our Gay & Lesbian Community Center library, and now regret doing so. Save your money; Don't waste your time viewing.