SPL and Creep

I have watched 2 movies this week. The first was SPL, a Hongkong action movie featuring action stars Sammo Hung and Donnie Yen. The second was Creep, another British production showing the Pathé rooster logo.

In Creep, a young lady Kate (Franka Potente, a German actress who also starred in The Bourne Identity) was locked inside a London subway station. She soon found out she had company: an ugly, human-eating monster. What must she do to get out alive?

I was told that they have many unused or retired subway stations in England, and subway ghost stories exist among londoners. However, I am no londoner, and I have problem understanding this film. Blood ran throughout the film, but I hardly find it entertaining. The story was pasted together, people appear without reason. What is good seeing people die in front of me? There may be urban legends about war-time secret experiments in underground laboratories, but I cannot feel the horror, since I live so far away.

Impressions on Creep: 3/10, but I have saved something better:


SPL is about the relentless revenge of a cop in June 1997, a week before the handover of Hongkong. In 1994, Po Wong (Sammo Hung) killed Chung's (Simon Yam) key witness and the wife of the witness. Chung had sworn to protect their kid and put Po in jail. Just before Chung's retirement due to cancer in 1997, he and his colleagues would even temper with evidence and commit murder in order to convict him. Defying the law will do them no good. Instead of completing the conviction, they set him free. Kwan Ma (Donnie Yen), who was the replacement to Chung, must rectify the situation before things got worse.

Bad cop is always a good movie subject. The plot was probably not perfect, but it was good enough for an action movie. The great action stars more than remedied the situation, making it a must-see local movie this year.

It had a strong contrast with another recent movie starring Sammo Hung: Dragon Squad where a couple of very interesting speeches were given: "Each of us has a role in the society. If we rush to avenge our dead colleagues, who protects law and order? Our world will be in chaos," "Give yourself a chance. Drop the weapon and live." The cops in SPL went for a revenge. They sacrificed a lot. They created chaos. Po went too far and did something he regretted at the end. This is perhaps the moral of the story.

Impressions on SPL: 8/10