My Thoughts on "Weekend in Taipei"
Well, I finally did it. I finally watched Weekend in Taipei. I honestly did not think that I was going to get the chance to watch and review this movie before the end of the year. I was fully convinced that I was going to have to wait until next week to watch it and review it. But, aunt pulled through, she didn't let me down, she managed to get it for me. So now, I can talk about this movie and make it possibly my final review of 2024. So, if you read my last post about Bashar al-Assad's fall from power and grace, yes, I did get Weekend in Taipei to work. It wasn't work for me on Saturday (December 7, 2024) because of technical problems, it was a poor Internet connection 🛜. It wasn't work at all, so I just quit, and decided to wait until the next day, but then the news about Bashar al-Assad happened, and I decided to write about that instead and wait until the day after that to write my review of this movie. That's how we got here.
My aunt hasn't gotten us The Killer's Game, which is a bit disappointing, but hopefully now that she's recovered from her latest bout of COVID 🦠, she'll be able to get that movie for us. Because my grandma has been really dying to watch that that particular movie. It was one of the few movies that she was genuinely interested in this year, and I can definitely see why. It looks pretty good. If and when my aunt gets us that movie, and adds it to her Fandango at Home, then I'll watch it with my grandma, and then I'll write my review of it. I did the same thing with Twisters 🌪️, which wasn't a great movie, I didn't care for it, but it's always fun to watch movies together with her.
Now as for Weekend in Taipei, you're probably wondering what it even is and how I came to watch it. If this is the first time you're ever reading about this movie, I don't blame you because this is kind of an obscure movie, hardly anyone knows about. I haven't seen a single person online talk about this movie in any sort of detail. None of the big reviewers on YouTube did reviews of this movie, not Jeremy Jahns, not Chris Stuckmann, not The Flick Pick, not John Campea, not Double Toasted, not Cody Leach, not Tyrone Magnus, not even Adam Does Movies. This movie just completely flew under everybody's radar as everyone else focused on either Red One 🎄🎅, Gladiator II, or Wicked (2024).
Figures, this was a French movie 🇫🇷 that was only released in two other countries besides the US 🇺🇸, France 🇫🇷 and Taiwan 🇹🇼. It was released in France 🇫🇷 and Taiwan 🇹🇼 on the same day, September 25, 2024, while in the US 🇺🇸, it was released two months later on November 8, 2024, which was a few days after the election 🗳️, so I wasn't exactly in the right head space to review a movie like this if you know what I mean 😣. When it was released in the US 🇺🇸, it was a very quiet release. The distributor, Ketchup Entertainment barely did any advertising for this movie, they only did a couple of trailers, a poster, and that's really about it. The trailers were good, or at least, the first one was, but that's not enough to promote a movie and get it out there so that people will actually go and see it.
This isn't the first time I've watched and reviewed a movie this year that hardly anyone knew about or barely got any coverage from movie critics on YouTube. I watched Land of Bad 🇺🇸🇵🇭, a military action movie set in the Philippines 🇵🇭 and starring Liam Hemsworth and Russell Crowe, and while I didn't write a full review of it and post it here on my blog, I did write a shortened review or overview of it in the New Year's Eve Recap, which I will be posting in a few weeks on the day, New Year's Eve December 31, 2024. Speaking of stars though, it also didn't help this movie that it didn't really have any huge stars to draw people in.
The two biggest stars in the movie are Luke Evans and Sung Kang, but they aren't huge mega stars. They were both in the Fast and the Furious movies which is why there were also those Fast & Furious jokes in the comment section of the first trailer on YouTube, but they didn't play huge parts, they weren't the main characters. Sung Kang of course played Han, and while he is a member of Dom's crew (he's a member of the Family), he's not the top guy. He's always overshadowed by everyone else, especially Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, they were two main leads of the Fast & Furious movies until Paul Walker died then it was just Vin Diesel. I would also say Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, but he hasn't been in those movies since Fate of the Furious because of his feud with Vin Diesel.
The only other movie that he's appeared in the franchise was Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, or just Hobbs & Shaw if you prefer, and that was a spin-off movie that didn't feature Dominic Toretto or any of his crew at all, and then he did that after credit scene in Fast X, though there's no guarantee he'll actually be in the next movie, whatever it's going to be called. 11 Deaths of the Furious, Fast 11, Furious 11, Fast 11 Furious, Fast & Fur11ous, 11 Fast 11 Furious, or maybe just Fast & Furious 11, I don't know. Maybe something unorthodox like Not Fast Enough or Furiously Fast, or Fury of the Fast, Faster and More Furious.
They're always coming up with something crazy for the titles for these Fast and the Furious sequels, the ninth one was literally just called F9: The Fast Saga. They dropped the Fast Saga subtitle for the tenth movie, they just called that one, Fast X. If Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is going to be in the next Fast & Furious movie after Fast X and that after credit scene wasn't just a pointless dumb teaser that means nothing, then he and Vin Diesel won't be on screen together at the same time. Even if their characters, Luke Hobbs and Dominic Toretto are supposed to be in the same scene, they'll just have body doubles, and they'll film each side of the scene separately and do a shot reverse shot kind of thing to hide it and make it seem like they're in the same shot together even though they aren't. Just like they did on the set of Fate of the Furious.
Speaking of Hobbs & Shaw, Luke Evans played the main villain in Fast & Furious 6, Owen Shaw, but he was killed off at the end of that film, and then was ultimately overshadowed by Jason Statham who played Owen Shaw's brother, Deckard Shaw. No one talks about Owen Shaw anymore, not his own brother, Deckard Shaw not even his sister, Hattie Shaw. Owen Shaw isn't mentioned once in Hobbs & Shaw, he never factors into Hattie and Deckard's relationship, nor does he factor into Deckard's relationship with their mother, Magdalene "Queenie" Shaw. He hasn't even appeared in flashback in any of the Fast & Furious movies after Fast & Furious 6, nor has been revealed to actually still be alive like other characters in the franchise like Lettie or Han or Gisele. Owen has the distinction of being one of the few Fast & Furious characters (hero or villain) who has actually stayed dead, never switched sides and joined the Family, and only appeared in one film.
It's like the writers completely forgot Owen Shaw even existed. That, or Luke Evans realized that these Fast & Furious movies have only gotten worse as they've gone on and he wants no further part of it. He has better things to do, like this movie. This movie is pretty good, it's way better than the last three Fast & Furious movies, except for Hobbs & Shaw, that movie was alright despite the plot holes, plot conveniences, retcons, and character inconsistencies including the seeming erasure of Owen Shaw within the Fast & Furious storyline. If I had seen this in the theater, I would enjoyed it a lot. Now that I really think about it as I'm writing this, this movie was kind of trying to capture that same Fast & Furious feel, like there's a lot of car chases in this movie including one involving a dune-buggy, it features two actors from the Fast & Furious franchise, and it has a character who's obsessed with cars and knows everything about cars and is a great driver.
But, it's like a better version of that, that's much more down-to-earth and grounded, and isn't as crazy or stupid. Stupid's the word I'd use to describe the last few Fast & Furious movies. Like, there's no tanks, there's no submarines, there's no drones, there's no futuristic attack helicopters, there's no God's Eye 👁️ satellite surveillance system, there's no cyborgs, or super viruses 🦠, there's nothing that completely defies the laws of physics, none of that. This is a purely street-level crime thriller action film with people driving cars and shooting guns at each other, and beating each other up with martial arts. Trust me, that may not sound like much, but that goes a long way in making this better than the last three Fast & Furious movies.
I would say there's no soap opera nonsense, but Weekend in Taipei does kind of have some soap opera-y type storytelling, like the whole long lost lovers ❤️ coming together again after they were separated years ago by circumstance and by misunderstanding, they hate each other at first, or the woman ♀︎ hates the man ♂︎ for leaving her, but then they both realize their love for each other ❤️ and come together like the couple they were always meant to be, letting bygones be bygones. Then, there's their whole long-lost son thing, that's right out of a soap opera, where the guy ♂︎ learns he had an illegitimate son with the woman ♀︎ he loves, and that she gave birth to him after he left, and had been raising him in his absence, not even sure if he was ever going to return and be the father to their son that she wanted him to be. They reunite, and became the family they were always meant to be.
Then there's the love triangle thing ❤️, where the woman ♀︎ is married to the guy ♂︎ that the main character hates and is archenemies with and is the main bad guy, but she doesn't really love him, she loves the main character. But the bad guy loves her and is really possessive of her and does everything he can to keep her and keep her away from the main character, and the main character is trying to win her back and redeem himself after abandoning her all those years ago while also trying to take down the bad guy and bring him to justice. But the soap opera elements aren't as over-the-top and they don't go to the same lengths that the Fast & Furious movies go with their soap opera stuff. There's no characters who died, and that we saw die, but then later turn out to actually still be alive. Like, those movies are straight up soap operas but with cars.
Just like how they're also spy movies, they became spy movies with Furious 7 and dropped any pretense that they were ever just street racing movies. Dom and his crew are no longer street racers or thieves, they're now spies fighting international terrorists. They're also superheroes because they can't die, they're completely invulnerable, they're invincible, they can do anything, and they defy the laws of physics constantly. Weekend in Taipei is like if the Fast & Furious movies never went down the path of becoming B action spy movies or superhero movies, and had remained street racing centric street level crime movies. Except Weekend in Taipei isn't about street racing, but it still has a lot of cars, it has a car enthusiast character who's a speed demon, and it leans heavily into the crime stuff. This is a strictly crime action movie with lots of cars and lots of car chases and some shootouts and martial arts fight scenes in-between. Put another way, Weekend in Taipei is like if Fast & Furious had remained Point Break but with cars, instead of becoming Mission: Impossible but with cars.
But now did I discover this movie, how did I come to learn about this movie, and what made me want to watch it? I also haven't actually talked the actual plot yet, but I'll get to that. Right now I want to discuss how I even learned of this movie's existence when so many other people haven't heard of it at all let alone seen it. I learned about this movie by seeing the trailer put out by IGN on their YouTube channel for movie trailers, IGN Movie Trailers. I saw that trailer, that first initial trailer that I mentioned earlier, and I thought, "This looks like a fun action movie and it's set in Taiwan 🇹🇼, I gotta go see this, in the theater if I can." Now, I never did end up seeing this in the theater, if I did, this review would've been up last month, but that is how I felt after seeing that trailer, it became a must-watch for me, I added it to my list of movies I wanted to review.
The reason why the movie being set in Taiwan 🇹🇼 is so special or so significant and was enough of draw for me to this film was Taiwan 🇹🇼's own history and political status. Taiwan 🇹🇼's government, the Republic of China, used to be on the mainland of China, it was the government in the mainland China before the People's Republic of China 🇨🇳. The ROC 🇹🇼 controlled the mainland for about 37 years (from 1912 to 1949), but after the Chinese Civil War 🇨🇳🇹🇼, the ROC 🇹🇼 was forced to relocate to the island of Taiwan, where they've remained every since while the victorious communists ☭ established their own government on the mainland, the PRC 🇨🇳. That is where both governments have remained ever since.
Now, Taiwan 🇹🇼 was a dictatorship for most of its history after the civil war, under the control of Chiang Kai-shek, and he actually had aspirations of retaking the mainland from the PRC 🇨🇳, but that never came to fruition because his military wasn't large enough or powerful enough to do it and the US 🇺🇸 and the political intrigue of the Cold War prevented him from doing it. And so, reunification never happened. But despite the ROC government 🇹🇼 being confined to an island, it was recognized as the legitimate government of China, it was still seen as the one true China.
That was until 1971 when the UN 🇺🇳 decided to recognize the PRC 🇨🇳 as the only legitimate representative of China instead of the ROC 🇹🇼, and the ROC 🇹🇼 lost its seat in the UN 🇺🇳, that seat being taken by the PRC 🇨🇳. It also lost most of its international recognition, with only 12 countries still recognizing them to this day, and all of those 12 countries are small and often poor countries in Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific with very power or influence within the current global order. The Holy See 🇻🇦 is the only European government that officially recognizes Taiwan 🇹🇼 as a legitimate sovereign country, and it's the only one of the 12 that isn't poor and actually has some degree of global influence. Soft power influence largely but still.
Taiwan 🇹🇼's political status has been in question ever since this decision by the UN 🇺🇳, as despite not being recognized as such, it is functionally, it is in practice, an independent state. It has its own government, it has its own constitution, it has its own laws, it has its own military, it has its own currency, it has its own territorial boundaries, it has everything an independent country has, it just isn't recognized as such and it isn't allowed to be categorized as such. Its name, the Republic of China, and its constitution prevent it from recognized as such. So long as the People's Republic of China 🇨🇳 exists, Taiwan 🇹🇼 cannot call itself an independent country nor can it be fully internationally recognized and have full diplomatic relations with every country in the world besides the 12 that currently recognize it.
It's because of the One China Policy, a policy adopted by pretty much every nation on Earth 🌎 that there can only be one China, only one country can legally call itself China and have full international recognition, and that one China currently is the People's Republic 🇨🇳. If Taiwan 🇹🇼 were to ever be fully recognized by the international community as what it is, an independent sovereign state, it would have to change its name to the Republic of Taiwan or the Republic of Formosa or whatever, and pretty much declare independence, which it already has in practice. This would just make it official.
But no body wants Taiwan 🇹🇼 to do this because they fear it could start a war by provoking China 🇨🇳 into invading Taiwan 🇹🇼 and attempting to taking it by force. China 🇨🇳 claims Taiwan 🇹🇼 as part of its own territory, as a province, and they've trying to reunify it with the mainland for decades, ever since the People's Republic of China 🇨🇳 was proclaimed. They did try to take it militarily in the 1950s, but after the Korean War 🇰🇵🇰🇷 and the first two Taiwan Strait Crises, they backed down from that.
Since then, they've been trying to take Taiwan 🇹🇼 through more "peaceful" means, coercing them, intimidating them with military exercises, inundating them with propaganda, trying to convince them that reunification is desirable and that living under the CCP ☭ is great and that resistance is futile and they shouldn't fight at all just accept Chinese rule 🇨🇳, and isolating them diplomatically, making sure that as few countries recognize Taiwan 🇹🇼 as possible even going as far as convince the countries that currently recognize Taiwan 🇹🇼 to drop their recognition and recognize them instead. They've already succeeded at this with El Salvador 🇸🇻 and Nauru 🇳🇷.
But, China 🇨🇳 is still open to military options to take Taiwan 🇹🇼 and have been training for it, increasing their military capability for it, under Xi Jinping, who has made the capture and incorporation of Taiwan 🇹🇼 into China 🇨🇳 a key part of his legacy. And if Taiwan 🇹🇼 declares independence, the Chinese 🇨🇳 will see that as enough of a provocation, enough of an excuse to justify a war against Taiwan 🇹🇼, an invasion to try to overthrow its government and take the island by force, annexing it and making it a simple province of China 🇨🇳.
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So, to avoid this, the US 🇺🇸 and other Western and other Western-aligned countries, but mostly the US 🇺🇸, have urged Taiwan 🇹🇼 to not to unilaterally declare independence, to not to change its official name or its constitution, and just maintain the status quo. A status quo that in my opinion is quite messy and complicated and is unsustainable in the long term. Sure, the status quo is holding now, but for how long? When one side respects the status quo and the other one doesn't and in fact wants to change it or dismantle it, who's say it won't completely fall apart and lead to bloodshed 🩸? What if China 🇨🇳 does decide to invade one day, huh? What then? They say that they have no intention of invading and that they only seek peaceful means of achieving reunification, but the Chinese government 🇨🇳 lies, they lie a lot, and they could easily be lying about that. You can't take the Chinese 🇨🇳 at their word, you can't take the CCP ☭ at their word, their word is meaningless, it's worthless.
That is why I think Taiwan 🇹🇼 should prepare for such a scenario, especially when the future is so uncertain and things can take a dark turn really at any moment. The US 🇺🇸's help is not guaranteed because of its policy of strategic ambiguity and because of the election of Donald Trump to the White House. No body really knows what his approach to Taiwan 🇹🇼 will be or if he would even come to Taiwan 🇹🇼's aid if China 🇨🇳 invaded, if he would send US military forces 🇺🇸 to confront China 🇨🇳 and fight alongside Taiwan 🇹🇼. He's given very wishy-washy answers when asked that question, and given his outspoken affinity to Xi and other dictators around the world, and his own desire to be a dictator, it seems likely that he would abandon Taiwan 🇹🇼 and just let China 🇨🇳 take it.
Taiwan 🇹🇼 needs to figure how to defend itself, potentially without the US 🇺🇸's help, and prepare itself to do that. Not just by strengthening its military, which it is doing (not enough but it is doing it), but by putting its people in a mindset that their current way of living is not guaranteed and that it could easily be taken away from them by China 🇨🇳 and that they must be willing to fight in order to keep their way of life. Taiwan 🇹🇼 is a thriving democracy, a much healthier democracy with a much more healthier and pluralistic society than even South Korea 🇰🇷, or Japan 🇯🇵, or even my own country the United States 🇺🇸 in all honesty.
Like compared to what's happening in the US 🇺🇸 and South Korea 🇰🇷, Taiwan 🇹🇼 looks pretty normal by comparison. It overcame the perils of authoritarianism, and hasn't slipped back into it ever since. Taiwan 🇹🇼 changed for the better, and hasn't regressed to what it in the 50s all the way to the 80s, which South Korea 🇰🇷 can no longer claim. I mean, yeah sure President Yoon's martial law failed and was rejected by the majority of the South Korean people 🇰🇷, but the fact that it happened at all speaks to the decay and degradation that South Korean democracy 🇰🇷 has suffered.
South Korea 🇰🇷 is not a country that is doing well right now, it has suffered a lot of decay and corruption as a result of these multibillion dollar conglomerates 💵 that dominate the country, the chaebols. The chaebols are the source of a lot of the problems with South Korea 🇰🇷's politics. So, even if Taiwan 🇹🇼 has its own problems, some of the same problems as South Korea 🇰🇷, Japan 🇯🇵, and the US 🇺🇸, it is still doing way better than any of those three countries. Trust me 😒. I don't want to see that go away, to see that be trampled on by an authoritarian state such as in the one in China 🇨🇳, and I especially don't want Trump to be the one to hand Taiwan 🇹🇼 over to China 🇨🇳 on a silver platter.
So, that's the history of Taiwan 🇹🇼, that is the current political status of Taiwan 🇹🇼 in a nutshell summarized. If you read something a bit more in-depth than what I wrote here, you can go read all three of my past posts that I've written about Taiwan 🇹🇼. I'll provide the links here, here, and here, just click on those and you'll be good to go. But, that is why I was so surprised and interested to see Weekend in Taipei. It's not often you get to see a Western, largely English language movie, even an obscure mid budget B action flick such as this be set in Taiwan 🇹🇼, in the capital city of Taiwan 🇹🇼, Taipei.
Most movies, most Hollywood movies and even European movies which this is, avoid Taiwan 🇹🇼 altogether, they don't mention it, they don't take place there and that's because China 🇨🇳 has strict censorship laws and they don't allow any movie that shows the Taiwanese flag 🇹🇼 or acknowledges Taiwan 🇹🇼 as a separate country from China 🇨🇳. And these movie studios, these movie producers, and filmmakers want their movies to break into the Chinese market 🇨🇳 because it's one of the biggest film markets in the world, so they have to play ball and either just ignore Taiwan 🇹🇼 or accept China 🇨🇳's version of reality that Taiwan 🇹🇼 is a province of China 🇨🇳. Even athletes, singers, and social media influencers who perform or produce content in China 🇨🇳 have to censor themselves and tow the CCP ☭ line about Taiwan 🇹🇼 being apart of China 🇨🇳.
So, have a French movie 🇫🇷 that not only acknowledges Taiwan 🇹🇼's existence, but also takes place there is pretty unique and is a breath of fresh air. To be clear though, this is not a particularly political movie. It doesn't delve into Taiwan 🇹🇼's political status, or the tensions between it and China 🇨🇳. The most political this movie gets is about environmentalism because the kid in the movie, John Lawlor and Joey's son Raymond hates the main villain Kwang because his fishing company (which is actually a front for his illegal drug business) kills dolphins 🐬. That's it, that's the extent to which this movie gets political. Besides that, this movie doesn't delve into Taiwanese politics 🇹🇼 at all.
Like I said, it is a crime movie through and through, about a DEA agent going after a billionaire drug lord in a foreign country while also trying to rekindle his relationship with that drug lord's wife, who was his lover ❤️ from years ago before his career as a DEA agent pulled them apart. Realistically, this story could have easily taken place anywhere, in any city in any country, like it could've easily have taken place in Tokyo, or Seoul, or Beijing, or Shanghai, or Hong Kong 🇭🇰, or Singapore 🇸🇬, or Bangkok (if we're just talking Asian cities and Asian countries) and the story wouldn't really be much different. But the fact that they chose Taipei makes it that much more special.
From what it seems, the movie's set in Taipei because the director and co-writer, George Huang is Taiwanese 🇹🇼 himself, and he wanted the movie to set in a place that he was familiar with, a place he knew by heart ❤️. Kind of like how I want to make a cartoon show set in Albuquerque because it's the city where I grew up in and am the most familiar with. This was a passion project for him, and got Luc Besson to help him out with it, to co-write it and produce it. Now, I haven't talked about Luc Besson on this blog, the only other time I can think of that I mentioned him was in my post on Myanmar 🇲🇲, which was one of my earliest posts on this blog, it was one of the first ones that I posted. But to put it short, I'm not a huge fan of him. I only seen a few of his films, the ones he directed at least, and I really liked one of them, The Fifth Element, that's easily the best movie he's ever directed.
Lucy was garbage, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was better but still wasn't great, and Anna was much better than either of those two, but isn't anywhere near as great as The Fifth Element, not even close. I haven't seen La Femme Nikita, or Leon: The Professional, or Arthur and the Invisibles, or The Lady ♀︎, so I can't comment on those. Speaking of Anna though, Luke Evans is also in that movie in a starring role, which probably explains why he's in this movie. Luc Besson's much more prolific as a producer than a director and his output as a producer is much better than his output as a director. I mean, he produced Kiss of the Dragon 💋🐉, one of my favorite movies, and he produced Taken, which I've never seen (at least the first one) but I have heard it's a good movie. They even put that on the poster that it was produced by the same guy ♂︎ who produced Taken.
But, the last I heard about Luc Besson was that he bankrupted his own production company EuropaCorp because Valerian cost anywhere from €197 million 💶 ($209 million 💵) to $177 million 💵 or even $205 million 💵, and it flopped in theaters, making only $226 million 💵 worldwide. And yet, he pressed on by making Anna a few years after that. I also heard about the sexual harassment or assault allegations that were made against him by women ♀︎ who worked with him or women ♀︎ he used to date or was married to. I don't know the exact details or nature of those allegations but it kind of sour my opinions on him as a person. But, he was never arrested or prosecuted for any crimes, nor did he lose his job in the French film industry 🇫🇷, so I don't know 🤷♂️.
I'm not saying he's guilty of anything, but I will say that if it turn out that those allegations were true, I could believe it. Because not to sound mean or anything but he looks like someone who would do those kinds of things, sexually harass or assault or even raping women ♀︎. And if he is, then throw him in jail, give him a long prison sentence, keep in there for life. He is certainly an adulterer, I know that much because he cheated on one of his previous wives (who happened to play diva Plavalaguna in The Fifth Element) so that he could marry Milla Jovovich (who played Leeloo in The Fifth Element). At least he didn't direct this movie, he only produced it and co-wrote it, so at least part of the story was written by him, but I'm sure most of it was written and conceived by George Huang.
But, regardless of how political it is, or whether or not it delves into Taiwanese politics 🇹🇼 or the relationship between Taiwan 🇹🇼 and China 🇨🇳, it's still not getting a Chinese release 🇨🇳. Like I said, it was only released in three countries: Taiwan 🇹🇼, France 🇫🇷, and the United States 🇺🇸. It was never going to get a Chinese release 🇨🇳 for all the reasons I've already laid out, and I'm not even sure if it was ever meant to. Surely, George Huang had to have known that setting the movie in Taiwan 🇹🇼, in Taipei, that there was going to be no chance that it would ever get released in China 🇨🇳. I mean, he is Taiwanese 🇹🇼 himself, he's Taiwanese-American 🇹🇼🇺🇸, he's not ignorant to the political realities of China 🇨🇳 and Taiwan 🇹🇼, so I'm sure he made this movie knowing it was never going to play in China 🇨🇳 despite how apolitical it is, and was content with that.
This likely wasn't done out of spite to the Chinese Communist Party 🇨🇳☭, you know, he wasn't intentionally making a movie that would anger the Chinese 🇨🇳 and get it banned from China 🇨🇳 altogether, that doesn't seem to be George's MO, at least from what I've read and what I've seen from this movie. It seems more likely that he made a movie out of passion set in a place where he grew up in and had fond memories of, and he just had to accept the fact that the place where he grew up is unacceptable to Chinese censors 🇨🇳 and would immediately disqualify his movie for a Chinese release 🇨🇳, theatrical or otherwise.
There's an anime show that I've seen and like quite a bit called Black Lagoon. It's an action crime anime series set during the 1990s (so it's a period piece) with a strong emphasis on strong female characters ♀︎, women ♀︎ with guns. The women ♀︎ in the show and in the manga (since it was based on a manga) are both the strongest characters, but also the most damaged characters, and the men ♂︎ are mostly relegated to the sidelines, being portrayed as either weak and feeble or as strong but willing to accept a supporting role and let the women ♀︎ take the lead. The ones who aren't, the ones who are overtly misogynist, usually get killed right away. It's kind of like a reversal of what is often the norm in most action cinema or action television, where they're more male dominated and patriarchal ♂︎, well this show is female dominated and matriarchal ♀︎. Balalaika's gang, Hotel Moscow is matriarchal ♀︎ since she's the leader of it, she's the founder, her subordinates are mostly men ♂︎ and they all accept her leadership despite her being a woman ♀︎, and she's the big scary crime boss that everyone fears.
It takes place primarily in Thailand 🇹🇭, in a fictional city called Roanapur where crime and villainy has converged, like numerous criminal organizations from the around the world use Roanapur as their base of operations because of how lax the laws are and how weak and corrupt the police are. And also probably how low the taxes are, because taxes play a role in where organizations, even criminal ones, set up shop. Remember, Al Capone got put in prison for tax evasion, so gangsters don't mess with taxes. They pay them, but they make sure they go to a place where they have to pay as little as possible. Just the bare minimum to get by and not get arrested, not that getting arrested is any concern to a gangster operating in Roanapur.
The police in Roanapur are pretty much in the pockets of the criminal gangs and mobs that rule the city, and often do their bidding. Any "justice" you may receive in Roanapur amounts to mob justice, which is pretty much just violent retribution for something you have may done to piss off one of the numerous mob organizations that control the city. In other words, there is no justice in Roanapur, and the city is completely rotten to the core with no hope of salvation. You'd be better off nuking the city ☢️ from the sky with a nuclear bomb ☢️ carried by a bomber or an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) and completely starting over from scratch with a clean slate than trying to reform the city and clean up the streets because it is nothing but crime, that's pretty much all it is. It's a city for criminals and for criminals only, regular law-abiding citizens be damned. The show primarily focuses on a group of pirates 🏴☠️ called the Lagoon Company (hence the title of the anime and manga) who operate in Roanapur and smuggle goods in and out of Southeast Asia, and often take jobs from the various criminal organizations inside Roanapur.
But, the reason why I'm even bringing this up is that the show (and the manga) features a prominent Taiwanese character 🇹🇼 named Shenhua, who is an assassin working for the Hong Kong Triad 🇭🇰 and only uses bladed weapons, Kukri knives she tied to her arms with ropes. Though she occasionally takes one-off bounty hunter jobs, like when she joined the group of bounty hunters from across Roanapur and Southeast Asia to collect the bounty on Jane Bhai AKA Greenback Jane, an Indian hacker and professional money counterfeiter 🇮🇳💻💵 wanted by a Florida-based crime syndicate that she once worked for. They failed to kill her, but she was one of the assassins and bounty hunters who attempted to collect that bounty. She's an atheist according to the anime, but apparently that was a translation error on the part of the English dubbers, and her actual religion is Taoism, an ancient Chinese philosophy dating back to the 6th century BCE. But honestly, I think her being atheist makes way more sense than her being a Taoist, like it fits her character way more.
I mean, can you really picture Shenhua being a practicing Taoist with everything we've seen of her and what we know about her personality in the anime (and manga presumably)? I can't. So, I prefer her being an atheist. An accident of dubbing made a character way more interesting. She's one of my favorite characters in the series (I say series because I've never read the manga), and she's a lot of other people's favorite character too, she's a fan favorite. Not just because she's a badass, but because she's funny as hell 😄. She's one of the funnier characters in the show 😄, and is the only one who isn't miserable, sad, or angry 😡 all the time and actually seems like she's having fun.
I've always thought a spin-off series or spin-off movie or OVA focused on Shenhua would be really cool. But, the thing I really want to see is a video game centered around Shenhua. There has never been a video game based on the Black Lagoon IP (intellectual property) to my knowledge, so why not make the first Black Lagoon video game about one of its most popular side characters, or supporting characters I guess you could say? Just imagine an M rated Black Lagoon hack and slash game where you play as Shenhua, and occasionally have help from her friends, Sawyer the Cleaner (the chainsaw-wielding body disposal specialist and bounty hunter who had her throat slit sometime in her past and can only speak with an electrolarynx as a result) and Lotten the Wizard (the mysterious Mauser C96-wielding bounty hunter who's a bit of a poser who thinks he's a lot more badass than he actually is). In the words of Dwayne Johnson when describing Red One 🎅🎄 on IMAX, "it's gonna be game over." I would buy such a game in a heartbeat 🫀, if I had the money 💵 for it of course.
I've written a whole piece about this, but to summarize, I suggested that game should take place in Taiwan 🇹🇼, the place where Shenhua came from. Maybe it could even take place in Taipei 😉. It could be about Shenhua accepting a job in Taiwan 🇹🇼, either from the Hong Kong Triad 🇭🇰 or just an independent bounty hunting job. One of my earlier ideas was having the game address the relationship between China 🇨🇳 and Taiwan 🇹🇼 directly by having Chinese spies 🇨🇳 or the Chinese military 🇨🇳 being the bad guys, and address Taiwanese identity 🇹🇼 directly as a distinct identity from the Chinese identity 🇨🇳. Even if the last part wouldn't really be all that historically accurate since the majority of Taiwanese 🇹🇼 still identified as Chinese or both Taiwanese and Chinese. But Shenhua went out of her way to call herself Taiwanese 🇹🇼 instead of simply Chinese, so I figure she feels quite strongly about her Taiwanese identity 🇹🇼.
Why do I want the game to focus so much on the China-Taiwan issue 🇨🇳🇹🇼? Just to spite the Chinese censors 🇨🇳 by purposefully making a game that will get banned in China 🇨🇳 😂 because I'm just petty like that. I'd even have the game be released in Taiwan 🇹🇼 first before released in every other country just to spite China 🇨🇳 even further. But on a more serious note, I think the Taiwan issue 🇹🇼 is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and I feel like more people should know about and talk about and I think that this would be a good way for people to learn about this issue in a way that's fun and exciting. Black Lagoon isn't just a crime show, it's very political and delves into real-world issues, and wasn't afraid to involve foreign governments and militaries.
Like, the Roberta's Blood Trail 🩸 OVA was very political, involving a CIA black ops unit (a lot of the members of which happen to be Vietnam War 🇻🇳 veterans), talking about the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, talking about the CIA's involvement in Latin America, the CIA's involvement in Roanapur itself, and talking about the US 🇺🇸 itself and its role in the world. The US 🇺🇸 is treated as if it's an evil empire with its tentacles in every corner of the world. If you had any doubts about the political leanings of the writers of the show and the author of the original manga, there you go. The character Dutch even reads a book 📖 written by Mao Zedong himself advocating for his unique form of communism ☭ called Maoism at one point in the OVA. The character Eda is an undercover CIA agent, sent to keep tabs on Mr. Chang, the leader of the Hong Kong Triad 🇭🇰 who is a CIA asset (as in he's backed by the CIA), and is used as a way to control and manipulate what happens in Roanapur in a way that serves US interests 🇺🇸 in Southeast Asia. So, there is a precedent for this sort of thing, even in a Black Lagoon video game.
But if not that, then I guess you could go with something less political like a rogue member of the Hong Kong Triad 🇭🇰 or someone else in the criminal underworld who the criminal organizations in Roanapur want dead and have put a bounty on their head. Maybe even a rival of Shenhua's from her past or something. But, I think that would be less interesting than my idea. Regardless of whatever direction they take with the story of the game, I think it would be a great opportunity to explore some of Shenhua's backstory. How she became an assassin and how she joined the Hong Kong Triad 🇭🇰. The show never delved into Shenhua's backstory, nor did the OVA, I don't know if the manga ever did like it did other characters like Eda. But if not, then this video game could give them the opportunity to explore her backstory, at least a little bit.
But, enough of that tangent, let's actually talk a little bit more about the plot of this movie. What is Weekend in Taipei actually about? Well, the movie's about this somewhat loose cannon DEA agent named John Lawlor (Luke Evans) who travels to Taiwan 🇹🇼 to try to gather enough evidence to take down Taipei-based billionaire drug lord Kwang (Sung Kang) under the guise of a weekend vacation (hence the title of the movie) that his boss sent him on after a sting operation in the States 🇺🇸 went bad. But, while he's there, he reunites with an old flame 🔥 of his, a woman ♀︎ named Joey (Gwei Lun-mei) who had met in the past, who comes to him for help after her son Raymond (Wyatt Yang) snitched on Kwang and he starts hunting them down. That is when Joey reveals that Raymond is actually his son, he is both of their son. They conceived him while they were still together 15 years ago before John's career as a DEA agent split them up.
You see, he was undercover in Taipei, trying to take Kwang down, when he met Joey, who was a driver working for Kwang after some of his drugs were found in her village and he forced her to work for him as punishment for stealing the drugs (even though she didn't steal them) and also because he became enamored with her 😍 because hey, she's an attractive lady. John and Joey fell in love 🥰, and just as they were about to start a new life together and just as Joey was about to tell John that she was pregnant 🤰 with his child, John told her the truth that he was a DEA agent and that the police were going to arrest her because they couldn't pin any of the crimes on Kwang and that they were just going to use her as a scapegoat. But, he loves her ❤️ and doesn't want her to be arrested, so he helps her escape and erase her identity and start fresh. Joey herself is heartbroken 💔 when he tells her all this because he was lying to her all along and she felt betrayed by him. So, in response, she fled to Kwang, married him, gave birth to Raymond and then raised him by herself while Kwang provided them "protection."
Really, this was a marriage out of convenience because Joey had no one else to turn to. She really doesn't like Kwang because of how controlling and manipulative he is toward her. We see how abusive and toxic their relationship is at the start of the movie, as Joey is trapped in a loveless marriage, just trying to raise her son in a comfortable and safe environment, and Kwang is intent on keeping her trapped. We see this by when he lashes out and retaliates against her violently when her son tries to expose him for his crimes. He's obsessed with her, and wants to keep her to himself, even she doesn't actually love him back, he doesn't care.
He doesn't care about her son Raymond, in fact he's more than willing to kill him for stealing his ledger 📒 and sending it to John (not knowing that he's his dad), he just cares about Joey. He sees Raymond as an obstacle getting the way of his love for Joey ❤️, and is willing to kill him so he can he can be closer to Joey and have her all to himself with nothing to distract her or make stray away from him. By the way, about that scene where Kwang threatens Raymond's life for stealing his ledger 📒, he mentions the Joseon Dynasty even though the Joseon Dynasty was a Korean dynasty not a Chinese one.
It's not like Kwang is supposed to be of Korean descent or anything (even if the actor who plays him is) as that's never hinted at in the film at any point. This is just wrong. It seems like neither Luc Besson nor George Huang did any research while writing the script. I pin this one on Luc Besson, as he probably heard the name, Joseon Dynasty, and thought "That sounds Asian enough, I'll put that in the script in the scene where Kwang monologues while threatening to cut off Raymond's leg 🦵. I mean, we're mainly making this for a primarily French and American audience 🇫🇷🇺🇸, they won't know the difference." If that's the case, he didn't count on me. I know my Asian history, and I know which imperial dynasty was Korean and which one was Chinese.
The reason why Raymond stole Kwang's ledger 📒 and tried to expose him is that Raymond is a blazing environmentalist, and he didn't like the environmental degradation that Kwang's fishing company (which is really just a front for his drug business) was causing. He didn't like how he was killing all these dolphins 🐬 with his fishing operations. So, he stole the ledger 📒, thinking that it would provide enough evidence to prove his harm to the environment. Little did he know that the ledger 📒 actually contained evidence to prove Kwang's guilt as a drug kingpin. That's why Kwang freaked out and lashed out so violently because he knew that if the contents of that ledger 📒 got out, the empire he spent so long building would crumble into dust and he would go to prison possibly for the rest of his life. He'd just be another El Chapo or Pablo Escobar.
Joey may blame John for why this all happened and why Kwang is after them and she does, but really this was all Raymond's fault, he let his environmentalism get the better of him, and he put his and his mom's lives at risk. But, really him exposing Kwang like this, and John coming into the fray was a good thing because it actually gave Joey and Raymond an escape, a chance at real freedom and an actual better life. Joey and Raymond were not living a good life under Kwang, they actually quite miserable and were slowly being suffocated, the light being sucked out of them. They were just becoming husks of their former selves, just going through the motions, walking on eggshells trying not to piss off Kwang. It's only when Joey lets go of her anger towards John that she finally realizes that, and finally decides to leave Kwang entirely and embrace John again.
The movie has a happy ending where Kwang is not only arrested and is convicted and sent to prison due to the evidence John and Raymond gathered, John and Joey get back together and become a real couple, and they start raising Raymond together like one big happy family. The movie shows them on a vacation in Paris that John's boss told him to go on since he used his other mandated vacation to do off-duty work in Taipei to catch Kwang and after the Taiwanese police 🇹🇼 tell him to leave the country. This is a French movie 🇫🇷 (by an American director 🇺🇸), of course it was going to end in Paris. And it's in this scene, where Joey reveals to John that she's pregnant 🤰 with another baby, who is heavily implied to be Kwang's child, and then the movie ends with a bunch of family photos with John, Joey, and Raymond with the new baby in the end credits.
I first mentioned Weekend in Taipei in my third and final dedicated post on Taiwan 🇹🇼 which I actually linked to before, and I made a lot of assumptions and predictions about what the film was going to be about and what it was going to be like, and while a lot of my predictions and assumptions were correct, I would say I got the broad strokes right, there were some things that I got wrong. Like, I assumed that scene that was shown in the trailer in the Chinese restaurant where John is undercover and his partner Fs up and gets them exposed by Kwang's men was when he was undercover in Taipei in the past. But it wasn't. It's an actual a different undercover assignment that John was on, and it's even in Taipei, it's in Minneapolis. It still has to do with Kwang, but it wasn't the undercover assignment in Taipei from 15 years before where he met Joey.
That scene in the Chinese restaurant is a good scene, it's one of the best action scenes in the entire movie. It's set to "Ring of Fire 🔥" by Johnny Cash which is certainly a choice, and the scene is much more comedic, like it's played up for laughs 😄 as John's partner just keeps getting beat up and gets more and more injured as the fight goes on. There's even a moment with a cheese grater, where John's partner gets cut by one the bad guys with a cheese grater. What is it with all these action movies and using cheese graters as weapons during fist fights? I've now seen three action movies where that's happened, TENET, Boy Kills World, and now this.
I also thought this movie would be told rather linearly and in chronological order where we'd see John's time in Taiwan 🇹🇼 from 15 years ago, where he meets Joey, they fall in love 🥰, and then John has to leave her because he's an undercover DEA agent and she's a criminal working for a drug lord. Then we'd see the events in the present day play out. But that's not how it goes down. Instead, it immediately starts out in the present and we stay in the present for most of the movie. The backstory between John, Joey, and Kwang is told in flashback, just like in a lot of other action movies. What happened to action movies having prologues and showing us the past stuff first before jumping into the present day? Why does everything have to be told in flashback? Also, that dune buggy scene I alluded to earlier was in a flashback, it wasn't in the present day, which is disappointing. I was hoping that would be a present day scene, or at least we'd get a second dune buggy scene set in the present day after we got that flashback with Joey, but no, we don't get that either.
It turns out too that the trailer showed the final fight between John and Kwang, which is in a movie theater. I suspected that, and I was hoping I was wrong, but I wasn't. I hate it when movie trailers do that when they show the final scene or the final fight. Sony does this a lot, and I don't like it when Sony does it. It's a shame that Ketchup Entertainment engaged in this too. Speaking of that final fight though, I was kind of surprised at how comedic it was. Like, that scene is kind of played for laughs. While everyone else flees the auditorium when John and Kwang show up and start fighting, this old couple stays and just watches the fight, thinking that it's a part of the movie they're watching.
The old lady even says something like, "these are some nice 3D effects," you know that old joke you've seen a million times. It kind of undercuts the drama and the tension of the fight, I kind of feel like that final fight would've been better if it didn't cut away to show that old couple and if that old couple just weren't there. Other action movies have done similar gags like the baby in Furious 7 (or was it Fate of the Furious?), but they're usually a quick thing that doesn't constantly interrupt the fight. This interrupted the fight because they just kept cutting to that old couple, and it kind of ruined the fight. Made it seem like it wasn't that big of a deal and we shouldn't take it seriously.
The thing that surprised me was just how much the leaned into the romance stuff ❤️, I did not expect that. Like this is as bit of a romance movie ❤️ as it is an action movie. I already said it was like a soap opera, and it is, some of this stuff is right out of a soap opera, but it also feels like a romantic comedy ❤️ at times. Like, the scenes between John and Joey are bickering with each other after reuniting after 15 years feel like scenes you'd see in a romantic comedy ❤️. This is a romantic comedy ❤️ with car chases, shootouts, and martial arts fight scenes. But, I didn't really mind it, like the romance aspect ❤️ makes the movie stand out a little bit, it helps us get to know the characters a little bit more and make us care about them, and makes it so that you aren't getting bored by the action like you would if the movie was just nonstop action with no breathing room in-between. And for what it's worth, it is a good romance ❤️, like Luke Evans and Gwei Lun-mei have a lot of chemistry with each other.
You believe that these two characters are in love 🥰 just from the performances of the two actors. I've never heard of Gwei Lun-mei before, I hadn't seen her in anything before this, but she gave a pretty damn fine performance. She is the heart ❤️ of this movie, and she and Luke Evans both carry this movie. Sung Kang hams it up as Kwang, this villain who's just pure evil and who you just love to hate and want to see get his comeuppance. The kid actor in the movie, Wyatt Yang is okay, like he wasn't as bad as the comments in the comment section of the trailer were saying, but he gets overshadowed by the adult actors in the cast, all of whom are pretty good.
So, the kid was alright, but he did make several bad decisions that ended up putting him and his mother in danger, like he instigated the events of the film, and then later, he does something similar when he disobeys what his mother and his father say and goes to steal this USB drive that has digital versions of the contents of the ledger 📒, and what happens? He gets caught and gets taken hostage by Kwang. He's lucky Kwang didn't just kill him then or mutilate him like he threatened to do earlier on in the film. So, it's the kid's performance, his performance is fine with the material he was given, it's just the way the character was written that they just have him make the stupidest and most irresponsible decisions just to get the plot going or to move the plot forward.
In fact, I kind of wish the movie had more action because the romance ❤️ takes center stage and the action is few and far between, like they sprinkle in action here and there, but it isn't a ton. The majority of the movie is romance ❤️ and crime drama. Too much action can be a bad thing, but I feel like this movie went in the opposite extreme a little bit with having very few action scenes. I wish there was a little bit more, and if there had been more I would've loved this movie even more. I would've said it was a great movie instead of just a decent movie.
That being said, the action that is in the movie, the action that we do get, is pretty awesome. Very creative and well choreographed I would say, even if it can be a bit clichéd at times like when the tattoo guy (one of Kwang's henchmen) not only uses two guns (like he dual wields two pistols) but he also fires them sideways. It's just two guns but sideways two guns. The song choices in this movie are also quite interesting, like I mentioned "Ring of Fire 🔥" but that's not the only example of a weird or interesting song choice. An Asian rendition of the famous Rolling Stones song "Paint It Black" done with Chinese instruments was used in both the opening credits and during the scene towards the end of the film when John and Joey drive away from to the village and go back to Taipei to save Raymond. It was really cool, and I just had to listen to it again after I heard it in the movie. This cover of "Paint It Black" was done by Nini Music, who is actually Taiwanese 🇹🇼 herself. She has a YouTube channel where she posts all of her, I'll post a link to it as well as a link to the song itself. Click here and here.
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