Soccer star Fat (Chow Yun-Fat) thinks his wife Joey (Joey Wong)
is conspiring with his doctor George (Eric Yeung) to poison him, basically
because they are secretly a couple. At the same time, Roberto (Kenny Bee),
star of a rival soccer team, can't take the nagging of his wife Anita
(Anita Mui) anymore. Eventually, Fat and Roberto meet at a bar, hit it
off almost immediately, get royally drunk, and then plot to kill each
other's wife. Fat gets so charged up by the idea that he goes over to
Roberto's house right away to try and kill Anita ... but he's so totally
drunk that he fails to even remotely touch her, he only gives away his and
Roberto's plan before crashing on the couch. Learning her husband wants to
kill her, Anita moves out though. When Roberto returns home and only
finds Fat, he believes Fat has actually killed Anita, and since his memory
is hazy at best, Fat thinks so as well. But since at least in his mind he
has killed Anita, he requests that Roberto kills his wife. When Roberto
meets Joey though, he takes an instant liking in her. Still, he owes his
friend, so he makes a few totally failed attempts to bump off Joey, some
of which backfire. Anita meanwhile returns home without Roberto noticing
it, but seeing him leave to Joey's place time and again, she thinks he has
an affair. Only eventually, Anita reveals to Roberto that he is not
dead, which of course means he has no more obligation to Fat - and thus
races over to save Joey's life, with the result that he and Fat almost die
in a gas explosion, are almost electrocuted and eaten by piranhas, all
death traps set up for Joey. Upon realizing what her husband had in
store for her, Joey leaves with Anita, who's pretty much in a similar
situation, which leads to a chase that ends up with the couples
reconciling in a runaway hot air balloon they snatched from a wedding
party ... To state the obvious first: Yes, the basic premise of
this film was based on Strangers
on a Train, there is little doubt about that, but the movie does
its best to not be a remake but develops the idea into a different
direction and puts a comedic twist to it. Unfortunately though, while
the film succeeds in making something new out of an old idea, it fails in
making it into smething really good, and the problem of the film is that
it's way too harmless. After all, this is a film about murder, so one
thinks it would carry a myriad of macabre ideas by default even and would
ooze black humour - but no, it's just a light-hearted and slightly
pointless comedy. True, it's less driven by badly executed slapstick than
many other Hong Kong comedies, and does feature a few funny scenes even -
but that hardly makes it any more than acceptable entertainment, and
anything but a good film.
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