Untouchable review: Chinese comedian Shen Teng breaks bad in joyless, old-school, Hong Kong-styled crime drama

Untouchable (NC16)
Starring Shen Teng, Zhang Yuqi, Jack Kao, Qu Zheming
Directed by Da Qing
Two things stand out in this China-made crime drama-thriller.
One — it’s a mainland effort to make a Hong Kong-style pic about the Andy Lau/Tony Leung Chiu Wai type of flashy-cool mobsters who do things their own way while exuding latent danger. “No one can beat me, I have my own rules,” goes the make-it-big line here.
Kinda like that stock market fraud flick, The Goldfinger. This time, the illegal income stream is a money-raking casino cruise ship anchored in international waters to somehow make it lawful while being lawless. Man, Nicholas Tse from Customs Frontline would ram this criminal vessel with his Coast Guard speedboat.
Two — top-grossing Chinese funnyman Shen Teng (Moon Man, Successor) completely curtails his comedic instincts to try his damnest to look as serious, unsmiling and criminally burdened as said Andy/Tony. Boy, this guy, muzzled like a clown in a coma, needs one big laugh here.
The result is a film which looks joyless, old-school and too outdated-derivative of past gangster movies while containing nothing really very new. Basically, we’ve seen this tale in various guises before.
Except for one angle. Untouchable is set in Macau which presumably makes things seem somewhat foreign and hence easier for a PRC movie to feature gangsters who, pre-officially required downfall, enjoy their illicit, violent high life too brazenly as a very bad example not to follow. One hapless casino hostess gets her neck snapped like a twig here. Gosh.
Director Da Qing, previously a short-film maker, shoots his show as part sleazy-mahogany interior and part tourist-brochure exterior with Macau’s iconic sights forming a familiar crime-thriller backdrop.
Shen plays Zun Fei, a smart, tough ex-boxer from China who, circa 1990s, lands in the gambling city and becomes the head debt enforcer of nasty, immoral Boss Huang (Taiwanese actor Jack Kao from A City Of Sadness, Project Gutenberg). The latter, an apex hood from Taiwan, is so vicious he bashes one rival to a bloody pulp ala Robert De Niro in The Untouchables. Er, no film-title relation here.
Zun, knowing his place in the food chain, instructs his swaggering, unbeatable Reservoir Dogs-style gang of brothers to “Help yourself to meat on the table. Don’t touch the summit.” Particularly when his thug bros, including hometown disciple, Xilai (Born To Fly’s Qu Zheming), question why they’re still stagnating at being mere muscle.
The chance to up their deal comes when the casino ship falls into their hands as a lucrative debt-settlement business opportunity. Zun seizes the chance to snag the profits as a co-owner while getting close to his boss’s hands-off estranged wife, Su Xiao (The Mermaid’s Zhang Yuqi, aka Kitty Zhang, looking femme-fatale untouchable), as his money launderer.
“We’re not model citizens, but we shouldn’t go too far,” she cautions as he confesses his pent-up desire for her. The two of them partake in the film’s best scenes. A mature flirtation between two people with impossible yearnings — she to escape, he to take her away — amid the underworld bro code being decimated.
A made man moving in on the turf and his boss’s moll? Of course, nothing goes well as power struggles, betrayal, revenge, loyalty tests and plain old mass brawls and shootouts fill up the slack. The casino ship setting, though, is wasted. Presumably due to this pic’s own debt incurring concern.
Which would still be okay actually if this China film didn’t try so hard to be a Hong Kong flick. Or maybe choose a different model to follow.
Untouchable has Shen Teng’s palpable mainland charisma leashed up just as Taiwan’s Kao oozes considerable slime like an island lizard.
A pity.
Now, that’s the cross-cultural, cross-straits thug life we’d really like to see. (2.5/5 stars)
Photo: Shaw Organisation