THE TROUGH is a labour of love for movie star Nick Cheung, here taking on writing and directing duties alongside playing the lead role. The end result is a typical thriller, heavily indebted to Hollywood in terms of plot (the Bourne films and the Jason Statham vehicle SAFE are particularly referenced) and also in terms of style. One of the ideas seems to have been to make it a heavily digitised, over-stylised viewing experience a la SIN CITY, which means there's a heck of a lot of CGI in all of the action scenes. I found the end result looked cheap and nasty as a result.
Otherwise, it's not all bad. There's plentiful action, mainly in the form of bloody shoot-outs which are handled pretty nicely at times. Cheung gives an impassive turn as the lead but there are interesting supporting players, including the reliable Lam Suet and the great Yuen Wah as another bad-ass character. The last third of the film seems to slow down considerably and things end on a ridiculously unsatisfying note, but this is still better than I expected from the first 10 minutes.
Otherwise, it's not all bad. There's plentiful action, mainly in the form of bloody shoot-outs which are handled pretty nicely at times. Cheung gives an impassive turn as the lead but there are interesting supporting players, including the reliable Lam Suet and the great Yuen Wah as another bad-ass character. The last third of the film seems to slow down considerably and things end on a ridiculously unsatisfying note, but this is still better than I expected from the first 10 minutes.