SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

SnakesOnAnAfricanPlain A fantastic surprise. This movie I absolutely loved. I'd encourage you to get this without reading anymore on the topic. Still, here's my review. The film begins with a well shot scene involving lots of close- ups on the most mundane of objects. It's shot with a taste of suspicion. Imagine the death scenes in Final Destination and that's what we have here. A little more toned down than that but you should certainly have an open-mind for jumps in logic. Accident has the kind of high-concept plot that you'll find scattered around movie land. A gang of assassins makes their hits look like accidents, but it all goes pear shaped when an accident befalls the group themselves. Only, was it an accident. The nature of these assassins work leaves them paranoid and restless. The film is successful because it takes the mature route of exploring its themes. There is some action, but it gradually winds down into a more procedural spy type film. The main character is a man that has dealt with loss, and then dealt it out himself. He sees nothing as an accident, but are the recent events hostile acts against him, or just coincidences? Each action scene is marvelously underplayed, with minimalist-no music. By the time the final credits role I was emotionally exhausted and thoroughly entertained. A high-concept film, that requires both brains and letting some logic slide.

LeoXIV I saw this movie at the Helsinki International Film Festival, more lovingly known as Love and Anarchy. The festival often caters to Johnnie To/Milkyway fans and this year we were "treated" to Accident.This review contains major spoilers, so if you are interested in the film, I would suggest skipping this review. In short, i think this movie contains a near perfect story, but one of the worst scripts ever.The story involves a group of contract killers that evade suspicion by staging elaborate murders that look like ACCIDENTS (Great premise). The group consists of four members: brain, fatty, uncle and an unnamed girl (Got to love these aliases, I mean who asks people to call them brain...a prick). The leader brain's wife (probably nicknamed heart, or perhaps the original fatty) died in a car crash which it would seem instigated brains contract killer lifestyle, and he seems to believe that the car crash was no mere ACCIDENT. The group get a contract to kill this innocent looking wheelchair-bound older dude (really uncool, btw). During the hit, something goes wrong and one of the group members gets killed, and brain is convinced this was no ACCIDENT either. Crazy times. This instigates the second part of the film, which focuses on brains operation to find out who set him up, killing his group member, listening to strangers have sex, murdering an innocent girl with the power of the sun, and getting killed himself. And for what? NOTHING! Yup, that's the big realization. Brain was a maniac, paranoid guy that saw figures in the shadows and great big schemes where there were none. Most likely this was his way to cope with the death of his wife, such a horrible act needed some rational reasoning, it could not be just an ACCIDENT. The idea that this guy was doomed by his own imagination and past experiences is just perfect. If this movie was remade by something like a Scorsese/DiCaprio collaboration they could really make something great. As it is....it's really bad. REALLY BAD.You see the problem is that nearly every scene is unrealistic and thus unbelievable, and furthermore no character acts even semi-rationally, which makes the movie unconvincing and the characters meaningless. They are simply devices to advance an incredibly stupid script. OK, so brain is this intellectual mastermind that can orchestrate these insane domino effects, right? Then how is it, that he can't notice that one of his four members is clearly suffering from severe dementia. I mean so severe that he is popping pills at the rate of Tic Tacs. And the director makes the point of showing that brain is so careful not to leave any traces, paying with coins from a cloth and changing modes of transportation to loose any potential tails. Yet, still the guy is always right next to the murders, doesn't use gloves and leaves prints everywhere, makes the money drops in a parking lot with cameras (why?), the point being that clearly the character and script have not been developed very far. The best example of this are the murders. They are just too much based on chance. The first murder is just silly, the idea being that in the end there is a fallen banner that covers one fifth of the marks windshield, and for some reason instead of just driving past, he gets out and pulls the banner down, which results in a window breaking and the glass killing him. The one that just made everyone in the theater laugh was a murder that used a wet cord from a kite to transmit an electronic shock to the wheelchair-bound dude. I mean the idea that someone could predict how a kite would fly in a storm and where it would land is seriously idiotic. Anyway.The other major issue is that this group is not sympathetic. They are contract killers with no redeeming features. From an ethical point, there is no reason for the audience to root for them, and the lack of a clear enemy through out most of the movie takes a lot of the potential tension away.So all in all, the potential is there and I must say that I personally enjoyed watching the movie, just because it was so silly and unapologetic in its stupidity (the eclipse at the end, and that road sign...), so in a way this movie would rate 1 star based on script and 10 based on premise, hence the rating of 5.

DICK STEEL You know how it is when you cry wolf too much, or are one of those pranksters who ultimately falls for a trick just because of you didn't believe it can happen to you. Accident plays along similar lines, and director Soi Cheang's latest film is an excellent atmospheric piece that adds to Milkyway's repertoire of tautly crafted contemporary crime thrillers.Accident introduces a bunch of hit men who bump their marks off very differently. They are not hardened criminals who are on the radar of the cops, but operate in such stealthy fashion, from obtaining their contracts, right down to execution (pardon the pun) and retrieval of payment dues. The movie boasts two of such finely designed set action pieces sans guns ablazing, but full of meticulously planned cunning (in what is staple in heist films) carried out to a T, where death gets delivered to victims and made to look like freak acts of god, which of course takes a wee bit of stretching of the imagination since some bits do rely on coincidences to ensure a perfect degree of success.The trouble amongst this group lies with the leader Brain (Louis Koo), whose crew consisting of Uncle (a welcome to see Feng Tsui-Fan back to the big screen), Fatty (a role that Milkyway evergreen regular Lam Suet owns), and a beautiful but unnamed woman (Michelle Ye), feel a little stifled given Brain's suspicious and paranoia nature. In what Brain preaches as Trust amongst his crew, it is actually trust that he personally doesn't embody, with frequent taps on his gang to ensure that they toe the line. The reason why Brain would choose a life as such was suggested in the prologue, which adds some emotional weight to the deliberate deadpan of the character, one conscientiously living off the grid, with no bank account, and no Octopus card too for public transport, preferring to use cash and not leave a paper trail.It's the second half of the film that intrigued a lot more, as we're drawn into Brain's suspicious world from the time the second action sequence didn't go as planned, and went horribly awry. Refusing to believe in chance encounters since there are others in the business, and that their earlier victim had been a triad boss, we're thrusts into a web of possibilities to the chain of events that follow, which involves an insurance worker played by Richie Jen in what would be nothing more than a glorified cameo. You'll start to question whether Brain's set up from the inside (ala Brian De Palma's Mission Impossible), or is outwitted by Jen's character, or just drowning into his own delusions where his paranoia finally caught up with him.And this became translated into the Louis Koo show. Of late he has been starring in a number of noteworthy roles, but his character here really took the cake. A friend of mine had commented that Lau Ching Wan would find the Brain character right up his alley, but I thought Koo did well enough in this role that involved minimal dialogue, of a quiet man on a warpath utilizing his trade to find some meaning in debunking that thing called Chance. I suppose you can also call it an occupational hazard of sorts.The mood of the film will really get to you, with rain soaked sequences, moments of aloofness and loneliness (kinda like an art film at times too) and unflinching scenes of violence, with credit also going to the soundtrack by Xavier Jamaux, who has also been involved with and contributed to Milkyway productions such as Sparrow and Mad Detective. If you're a fan of the soundtrack from those movies, then you're in for a treat when you watch Accident. Running less than 90 minutes, the finale, or the "Eureka" or moment of realization, is a scene that I'll remember for a long time to come. While it might have been similar to the Deux Ex Machina styled as employed in another Milkyway production in Eye in the Sky, I thought that it played into the themes of Chance, Fate and Karma all rolled into one perfectly shot and designed sequence, that had me at the edge of my seat and wondering how it would all finally play out. And when the answer is so starkly simple, you're left to ponder that you too have already become what Brain symbolized – you have thought too much, and share in the same level of reluctance to believe in anything other than the situation having to be something overly engineered.I would recommend that you give Accident a go in the cinemas, but of course if you're willing to put up with it being dubbed in Mandarin, and censored sex scenes being treated in the same manner as Overheard.

changmoh FRESH from the Toronto International Film Festival 2009, this Johnny To-produced movie has all the marks of an art-house flick. It has no gun play, no martial art duels and not much in terms of fast-paced action. It is, however, thick with tension, intrigue and paranoia.All these will probably work out to a short theatrical run, attended by art film lovers and Johnny To fans."Accident" offers up a 'new' kind of assassins for hire. Led by The Brain (Louis Koo), the four-member hit team choreographs intricate accidents on their targets. Since the deaths will invariably be classified by police as a freak accident ("death by misadventure"), they are off the authorities' radar. Indeed, the Brain is meticulous in his planning and his nameless partners, Uncle (Fung Shui-Fan), Fatty (Lam Suet) and Woman (Michelle Ye) are experts in their own fields.However, when one of the 'accidents' goes terribly wrong, Brain suspects that someone is trying to kill him - and he sets his sights on Fong (Richie Jen), an insurance agent who happens to be on the accident scene.Directed by Cheang Pou-Soi, "Accident" is a highly absorbing and engrossing crime thriller, especially in the first half. Here, we are fascinated by how the 'accidents' are planned and carried out, by the eccentricities of the individual members and, especially, the paranoia of Koo's character. With each sequence, Cheang manages to draw us deeper and deeper into his web of meticulous intrigue that seems to leave nothing to chance.Things start to fall apart in the second half when Cheang transforms the movie into a psychological thriller - with the perpetrator believing that he has become the target. His fear and quest for revenge make him careless (scribbling plans on the ceiling) and callous, suspicious of even his own members. The movie's credibility starts to strain and what could have been a masterpiece is flawed. - By LIM CHANG MOH (limchangmoh.blogspot.com).