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It's one of these massage parlors that are not brothels as such, but
for a certain amount, well ... Anyways, the real dramas at this parlor
are going on behind the scenes, like the story of the massage girl (Chiao
Chiao) whose husband gambles all her money away, then kills his daughter
in an accident and tries to hush everything up. When his wife finds out,
she cuts off his fingers. Then there's the girl whose brother is a
respectable doctor who doesn't want to see her to not have his reputation
tarnished. but of course, in his backroom, he drugs and rapes his
patients. When the police finds out, he turns to his sister to get him off
the hook. Gin (Chow Yun-Fat) and Miu (Yu On-On) are good folks, decent
folks, people who don't belong in massage parlors like this one - and yet
they both work there. Gin because his mother is a massage girl at the
club,a nd after having lost yet another job through no fault of his own,
he has to accept a job at the club just to make a living. Miu's dad is
gravely sick, and she has to make money fast to pay for his surgery.
Eventually she even has to sell her virginity to the highest bidder, just
to make the money in time. It's hardly surprising that Gin and Miu feel
drawn to one another, but then disaster strikes: Gin finds out his mother
doesn't only have a drug problem, she is also deeply in debt, and her life
is theatened if she doesn't pay up in time. So Gin turns criminal, and to
save his mother he mugs the first person who comes his way - and that
person is none other than Miu's dad, carrying the money Miu has made from
losing her virginity for his surgery. When Gin finds out whom he has
mugged, he feels rotten despite having saved his mother ... Unfortunately,
Gin's one crime has sent his life on a downward spiral, and soon he has
hooked up with Ah Sung's (Lee Ka Ting) gang and they rob a money
transport, then hide out in the massage parlor, where things soon get ugly
when Ah Sung and company want to take advantage of the situation and throw
in a rape or two while Gin experiences conflicting allegiances.
Eventually, Ah Sung gives away Gin's secret, that he has mugged Miu's dad,
but now Gin knows where his true allegiances lie, and he helps defeat Ah
Sung and his gang of baddies before giving himself up to the authorities
... Now this could have been a compelling ensemble drama with a
few sexy bits thrown in for good measure - could have been, but it isn't,
instead Massage Girls is a sloppily scripted and clichéed mess
that invariably chooses sensationalism over narrative ingenuity, and
always looks for opportunities to get its actresses topless rather than
tell its story compellingly. That the directorial effort does nothing to
carry the film and the ensemble cast is uniformly weak of course don't
help either. Rather a waste of time, actually.
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