| Ordell Robbie | 2.75 | Cute... |
With Hong Kong Rhapsody, Hong Kong Nocturne's follow up, Inoue Umetsugu reproduces the formula of the previous movie: a playboy magician forced to rebound after unemployment, girls with a naive charm, kitsch, musical, people who want to make it in show business, melodrama with the character of the old man on the verge of death. And it works even better: the use of rain when the old man is nearly about to die emphasizes drama, there isn't much heavy humour, the ladies' clothes are coloured in a nice pastel and the sung scenes get nice visual ideas (the birdcage, the magician acting like an emperor, the repetition of a face in the same screen). Directing's classical. From a rythmic point of view it's slightly better than the previous movie. Even the crime supblot is more believable than in the director's other movies. Anyway, the choregraphs don't live up to Hollywood's standards. But there's a huge wave of sung scenes at the end: a guy singing dressed like a mercenary samurai, West Side Storylike thugs, sailors and a romantic end. At its own scale, it's a firework. Naive and light firework but firework. That's called Hong Kong cinema.
