TheRetroCritic

Um... why didn't I purchase this again? Clearly THE best object I've held this year.

Wong Kar Wai's eclectic style is at its sharpest here in this beautifully crafted, quirky, hypnotic, heartbreaking little story of loneliness in Hong Kong. Two different but thematically close stories are told, one with Tony Leung and Faye Wong, the other with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Brigitte Lin. Both stories follow lost souls trying to beat their loneliness and let go of the past but the dynamic of each tale is very different. The first story is a bit darker with Brigitte Lin's blonde "femme fatale" being involved in drug smuggling, kidnapping and...murder. It's more of a thriller, really. The second part is much lighter and really sticks to its French New Wave-style rom-com feel. The cast is one of the best you'll find in any Hong Kong film: Lin displays a cold, piercing exterior but suggests she's more sensitive than she lets on. Kaneshiro is the heartbroken, kinda naive, nice guy you find in a lot of Wong Kar Wai films (see Tony Leung in Happy Toge

  A rubbish title does not a rubbish film make. Then again if you call a film Returner you have to expect some rubbish to make its way into the final product regardless. To be fair, the first half hour of Returner is actually pretty good. When the film remains a straight-forward sci-fi action thriller it works. Unfortunately, the Americans and the CGI aliens show up and it's all downhill from here. Some very silly lines ("I can see the bullets") and dodgy special effects bring down an otherwise cool and fun little film. Kaneshiro and Suzuki make a good team and Goro Kishitani's devilish villain is a lot of fun. The story is patchy at best and the ET -style ending is a mess to say the least. Then again, I'd never seen a plane transform into a weird insect-like Transformer controlled by tiny friendly aliens in big metal suits... By all means check out Returner but I can't promise you'll find much in it to really make it worth your while.