The Twins Effect

((summary taken from AsianMediaWiki))

Ace vampire slayer Reeve (Ekin Cheng) tracks his arch-enemy, the Duke Dekotes to Hong Kong. The Duke is hunting for Kazaf (Edison Chen), the fifth prince of the vampire nation. With Kazaf's blood and the ancient vampire bible, the Duke will bring a new age of darkness. On arrival, Reeve learns that he has a new partner, a feisty but inexperienced young beauty named Gypsy (Gillian Chung). Matters are further complicated when Reeve's innocent younger sister, Helen (Charlene Choi), develops a romantic relationship with Kazaf. With all the odds against them, our heroes get some unexpected help in the form of high-kicking paramedic Jackie Fong (Jackie Chan). In a high impact final reel, Reeve, Gypsy and Helen join forces to fight the Duke and his minions¡K Horror, comedy and high impact martial arts action collide in 'The Twins Effect'.




My Rating:



Okay, this is one of those movies that I've been wanting to see forever, and only recently had time to sit down and watch. So, as expected, you can probably guess I had certain expectations going in... and overall, I can say I wasn't completely disappointed.

First, let me start out by saying that this movie is not easy to categorize. It's got everything: comedy, horror, sci-fi, romance, drama... although, to be fair, even with the drama, there's still a touch of comedy underneath. And the comedy is what stood out to me, despite the sudden shift to seriousness towards the end.

But in the end, it was really hard for me to take this movie seriously... and I really don't think you're supposed to. It set out to be entertaining and fun, and I think in that way, they truly accomplished what they set out to do.

However, that doesn't mean that this movie is free from criticism. In fact, there were so many things wrong with this movie, I don't have the time or energy to go into all of them! So for brevity's sake, I'll just list the surface problems, and not bother with the details--especially where the plot holes are concerned. If I started talking about all the problems with the plot, I don't think this review would ever end!

My biggest problem with this movie, I think, was the flow. The transitions and editing were weak, and the movie seemed to jump randomly from scene to scene. The entire film seemed disjointed, making it hard to follow, and difficult to understand. At the end, however, everything (more or less) comes together, but when it's all done, it's hard not to feel like *something* was missing. It's as if they had a two hour movie, and just went at it with some scissors, and starting cutting out random scenes so that all that's left is a collection of haphazard clips that are strung together and called a movie. Hard to explain... but there you have it, lol.

Also, the vampire prince Kasaf kind of bugged me. He was so cute, and I loved how he wasn't a typical vampire--I mean, how many vampires would rather starve to death than drink blood from a human, lol? But when it comes down to it, he was just so weak, I couldn't help but be agitated with him. I wanted him to actually do something--not just fade into the background, and let everyone around him do all the fighting instead. Especially towards the end when Helen gets hurt... you can see that look in his eyes, like he's *pissed*, and yet he stays on the ground, moping!! What the #(#)%?!! SOOO annoying. I prefer stronger male characters (at least ones who don't just lie back while their girlfriends are getting beat up) so I didn't like him there at all.

I really liked Reeve and Helen's characters though. They were both kick-ass (Helen was my favorite--she was just so funny) and I liked how protective Reeve was of his sister. The actors didn't really stand out to me much, though I loved the guy playing Reeve. I could actually picture him as a vampire hunter/ protective older brother. Though surprisingly enough, I loved the guy playing Kazaf the most. His character may have annoyed the heck out of me, but the actor still did an excellent job portraying him--plus, his English was perfect. (If that was even him speaking--at times it reminded me of a dubbed voice-over for a video game, lol).

Gypsy... seemed a little strange to me. Not sure why. She just came across as an annoying sidekick... one who is more interested in romance than "fighting crime". Plus, the whole battle over the teddy bear with Helen was just weird. I couldn't understand why she was trying to make an enemy of her crush's sister... shouldn't she have been sucking up, or something? If she wanted to display her fighting skills, I would have rather seen a training montage with Reeve instead.

...All the characters were pretty typical, and there was really nothing new to be found there...

If anything, I'd say the strength of this film lies in its comedy, and its superb fight scenes. The fight scenes and the special effects were awesome! And I loved seeing Jacki Chan's cameo! My favorite scene in the whole movie, was probably when he was fighting the vampires... I just love the part where he paused to touch the guy's fangs, lol.

Overall, a fun and entertaining movie. Definitely, not one to be taken too seriously...

If you can look past its myriad of problems, and just enjoy it for its nonsensical fun, then I think you'll like it. Besides, it has vampires. And you just can't go wrong with vampires. ^_^