DLAznMovies.com: Rule #1

LINKS UPDATES

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Rule #1

Genre: Horror, Action
Starring: Ekin Cheng, Shawn Yue, Fiona Xie, Stephanie Che
Release year: 2008
Language: Chinese - Mandarin
Subtitle: English

SYNOPSIS:
Rookie Sergeant Lee (Shawn Yue) is injured in a shoot-out and is assigned to the Miscellaneous Affairs Department (MAD). There, he is paired up with Inspector Wong (Ekin Cheng), a police veteran who explains that MAD's role is to answer supernatural calls. Wong explains MAD's rule number one: there are no ghosts. For every seemingly inexplicable phenomenon, there is a corresponding scientific and rational explanation. MAD begins investigating a string of bizarre teenage suicides. As Lee and Wong follow the clues, they realise something sinister is heading their way...

RATING: 8.5/10
USER RATING:

REVIEW:
" What I do like about his movies, each one of them, is how he grips you right from the start. How it develops then on is a different tale, but his introductions are nothing short of mesmerizing. Here, he demolishes all preconceived notions you have when watching a movie, and warns you of sorts about the experience you’re going to go through with Rule #1, that is, to throw all assumptions out of the window. In fact, the opening scenes were frantic and leaves you just enough to continue questioning in which direction the movie will propel itself forward.

And thankfully, it made all the right moves, despite momentarily lapses in succumbing to cheap scares that don’t really add much value to the movie. Yes, we know how Kelvin crafts scenes that will send shivers down your spine until the crescendo (even Men in White‘s introduction had shades of this), and they all work here too, except that I thought that they were a little unnecessary except to anchor the movie in the land of the supernatural. It’s central plot doesn’t become clear until midway through the movie, and from then on it lunges to a higher plateau at breakneck speed, with the audience probably second and triple guessing themselves all the way to the finale, with flashbacks at times becoming a little too spelt out for good...

...Sure there are familiar shades from movies like Fallen and Suicide Club, and a lot of “waking up” moments, but they never did once mar my enjoyment of the movie as it went along. Rule #1 had enough suspenseful moments to thrill, and Kelvin Tong seemed very assured to be in familiar grounds of horror. Those expecting an all out fright-fest may be slightly disappointed as it turns on the supernatural spin a lot more than the boo-moments, and fans of local actress Fiona Xie will find that their television darling still got relegated to a flower vase role in a one-dimensional performance, despite this being her second movie outing (after One Leg Kicking). Here she plays the dutiful girlfriend to Sergeant Lee, and that’s about it, being half-asleep most of the time (no, nothing sexy about that too).

Mark my words, Rule #1 is Kelvin Tong’s best movie to date, and definitely very well executed, as good as or even better than any Asian thriller in recent memory. He has shown again that he can craft commercially viable and intelligent movies with relatively original stories to tell. "

Source: Twitch

PREVIEW: