Rating: C
Dir: Sasie Sealy
Star: Tsai Chin, Hsiao-Yuan Ha, Michael Tow, Woody Fu
I wanted to like this much more than I did. It has a great central performance, no question. But when I see ‘95% on Rotten Tomatoes’, and reviews like “incandescent and utterly delightful,” I’m expecting a lot more than intermittent entertainment I can’t even tag as comedy. It got to the point I wondered if there was another film with the same title, or I had somehow been suckered into watching The Asylum knockoff version: Fluky Nana. Nope. This is what you get. A film which builds its foundation well, then opts to throw a tarp over the half-finished project, and send in its invoice, hoping to get paid in full through some kind of clerical error.
Chin deserves better. Her career started over sixty years prior to this, as the adopted daughter of Ingrid Bergman in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. The actress was a Bond girl in You Only Live Twice, played the child of Christopher Lee’s Fu Manchu in five films. She was in The Joy Luck Club, and after forty years, returned to the 007 universe as one of the poker players in Casino Royale. At the age of 85, she exudes a calm tenacity, with a face that speaks volumes, whether or not she’s actually speaking. Chris suggested Chin was like a female Takeshi Kitano, and she’s not wrong. Her character here, Grandma Wong, is simply someone with whom you don’t argue. Might as well disagree with the mountain.
After getting a good reading from a fortune teller, promising great luck, Grandma withdraws all her savings, goes to the casino, and loses it all. But on the bus back home, the passenger she’s sitting beside keels over and dies of a heart attack, leaving a bag full of cash. When the bag’s triad owners seek to reclaim it, Grandma goes to their rivals, and hires a bodyguard in the large shape of Big Pong (Ha). And, then? Uh, precious little, to be blunt. The same, vaguely inept pair of goons try to intimidate Grandma, but basically bounce off Big Pong. It’s a nice relationship between the senior citizen and her guardian, who really would rather be working on the health app he’s developing with his sister.
That is definitely not enough to sustain the film, and the director doesn’t know what to do, except point the camera at Chin (I note Sealy has yet to direct another feature). While never a bad move, I suspect the film may inherently limit itself by what feels like trying to pander to an ethnic audience. It is on more solid ground when embracing universal truths, such as Grandma’s steadfast refusal to give up her independence. Otherwise, it relies too much on the simplistic. Look! An old woman is interacting with criminals! Isn’t it funny? Well, no. Not for long, certainly – great though Chin is. Indeed, that might be part of the problem: while she smokes the hell out of a cheap cigarette, I had the increasing sense there was a lot more in her acting locker, left sadly unused.