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The one, Reverend Ma (Paul Chun), is a priest fired from his job who
died in a toilet-related accident but isn't accepted in heaven before he
has done good, the other, Flit (Fung Shui-fan), is a demon from hell whom
the devil (Chung Fat) sent to earth to collect souls. The two of them
soon find themselves fighting over the soul of Bruce (Ricky Hui), an
unsuccessful and insignificant musician who in his life has had nothing
but bad luck, culminating in the fact that the one song he has ever
written is stolen from him and becomes a hit for superstar Rocky (Chan
Pak-cheung) - whose unfortunately also the man his girlfriend Peggy (Jade
Hsu) falls for. When both the priest and Flit offer Bruce their
assistance, he initially falls for the demon and sells him his soul, and
Flit presents Bruce with three alternatives of how his life might go on:
In the first alternative, Bruce is rich and successful beyond belief, but
Peggy soon tires of him and he has to realize he has become an asshole, in
the second Peggy is totally obedient to him, which soon backfires, and in
the third he and Peggy have a poor and simple life, which breaks them
though. Bruce doesn't like any of the alternatives Flit has offered and
walks out on him (evenm though the demon claims he's got more in store). Bruce
decides to get back Peggy he has to kill Rocky - which he totally botches
up, but at least Peggy now knows how much she means to him. The devil
tells Flit to get Bruce down to hell in 24 hours time, but by now Bruce
has hooked up with Reverend Ma, and he won't let go of Bruce's soul quite
so easily ... which ends in a finale resembling a live-action version of
the vintage computer game Space Invaders, at the end of it both the
demon and the priest are annihilated and sent to heaven while Bruce is
allowed to go on with his life. Rather unimpressive
supernatural comedy in which an often-told tale is inconsequently shaped
into a weak screenplay carried by mostly
rather tired gags. Only the Space Invaders-style finale shows any real
inventiveness, but that scene is played out for too long to remain fresh
and could have done with better choreography. The truth is of course
that there are way worse films out there based on the same premise, but
that's not really enough reason to watch this one, and one has to also
admit that later superstar director John Woo shows no signs of ingenuity
in this one.
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find To Hell with the Devil at adultvideouniverse.com
