Tik Tok (2016)
What did I just watch? No seriously, can anyone tell me who has seen this mess of a film? What did I just watch? I so don't want to review this because I know I'll be overly critical, but I have to get something from this unenjoyable, utterly confusing movie. Right? It'll all be worth it? Right?
Okay, here goes. Tik Tok is a Chinese film that I believe is set in Korea. Part of me is reluctant to look it up, because knowing wouldn't solve half of the issues I have with this film. I'll touch briefly on the story here, but know that later I'm going into full spoiler territory. I don't much here for a reason; I'm either trying to entice you to watch something so therefore spoiling it would only ruin it for you, or I'm warning you away from something so you don't really need to know the itty bitty details. But this is a special case. Honestly I don't know why it's rattled me so much. But this isn't my diary, so lets get to it.
Tik Tok is about a Chinese guy called Guo Zhida (Wallace Chung, The Wasted Times) who has taken his brother's wife hostage and rigged a football stadium full of explosives; Korean detective Jiang Chengjun (Jung-jae Lee, Lakewood Plaza Turbo) and Guo's Chinese psychiatrist Yang Xi (Yueting Lang, Love Education) have to find the bombs before it's too late. Okay, right, that was a slog to get through. Suffice to say this is a plot that should have plenty of tension, twists and beautiful turns; and it does, it just does them wrong. From here on out I'm going to go a little ranty, a little spoilery, and a little too complainy. It's not my usual style, it's not professional (I used the word complainy) but I need to get this off my chest. But, if you don't want to read all of what is about to unfold (I don't blame you) this film is a confusing mess from start to finish with ridiculous plot twists that you see from a mile off and a payoff that sequel baits when really this film doesn't deserve any more screen time. With that said, let's get on with it.
The plot begins what feels like midway into a different film. We start with Guo in a therapy session and our Korean hero swooping in to save the day and make some arrests. The problem is the whole first 30 minutes are completely nonsensical. Not only do we not know who any of the characters are, and I mean any, but we also don't really understand what's going on. To make matters worse the characters all speak three different languages (more on that later) which makes things thrice as confusing. The plot seems to pick up around 30 minutes in, where characters have needlessly explained the plot to us, when really it should have developed naturally. I'm amazed I'm about to write this, but this film needed more time, as in this waste of a film needed to be longer. Honestly, it could have saved it. None of these characters are developed or fleshed out, so when the twist at the end is revealed we just don't care. You see there's two brothers, Guo Zhida and Guo Zhihua; they're twins. And we're supposed to believe that the villain we follow the whole film is Guo Zhida, when in reality it's his twin brother. He had this whole complex plan to steal money from an illegal gambling ring he owes money to, and this film is that complex plan. Except when I say complex, I mean stupidly ridiculous that needed everything, and I mean everything to go perfectly. It's so so stupid. But because we are lacking that initial thirty minute development of the detective, of the two brothers and of the psychiatrist, we end up not caring that it's one brother and not the other; what difference does it make? On occasion the film will cut to this other brother, or it'll cut to this illegal gambling ring, but whenever it does it completely goes off the rails. It feels like you're watching an entirely different movie. Urrgh this is annoying! But it's worse, much worse.
So the main villain leads the detective and psychiatrist into the stadium to recover the bombs, and the whole time they're acting as if they're playing a game; to be precise his game. He asks them questions and if they get them right he tells them where the bombs are. The first issue here is that it's clear they're setting this villain up to be a Hannibal Lecter type character, a real smart arse who's much better than the silly detective who will eventually outsmart him. But once again, to beat a dead horse, there's no development, so we don't really know this to be true, he just sort of acts that way undeservedly. Hannibal Lecter works because we get the initial meeting between the two, but these guys don't meet until the stadium, in fact they're separated for a good chunk of the film. The only character he truly interacts with is his psychiatrist, but he doesn't seem to care about messing with her as much as he does the detective. To make matters worse the games he plays are so stupid. The first is he asks a simple question, "Who is Cristiano Ronaldo's son?" What is this, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? This question is so random even the actors seemed confused; the whole scene plays out really weirdly, as if everyone knew it was a crappy script. To find the answer to this question the detective rings his wife who he's divorcing (quite literally his only development) and it's the only other time (other than the beginning) that we hear of this divorce. He rings her to ask if she knows the answer, but of course the conversation derails into stuff about their divorce; it's played off as if the villain knew this was going to happen, so he could use this call to get under the detective's skin, but how on earth does he know that the detective didn't just know the answer, or even that it would be his wife the detective called? This is so convoluted. The whole football theme is just weird as well. They use the match to build tension; I believe somewhere during the film its mentioned that if the red team don't win then the stadium blows up. So the red team lose for a while. But then when they win it doesn't matter because all the bombs are disarmed, plus it was never his plan to blow it up anyway. And yet they still use it to build tension as if it has any baring whatsoever on the plot. Why? WHY?
And that's kinda my question for a lot of elements in the film. Why have the characters speak in English, Chinese and Korean, why not have the film set in China with everyone speaking in Chinese. Their English accents are horrendous and incomprehensible, the Korean actor's are all dubbed when they speak Chinese and its awful. Like why bother? Why not just have them all speak Chinese, or just find a Korean actor who can speak Chinese normally? Why is it set during a football match when the plot has no baring on football whatsoever? Why not just have one brother, why have the twist, it's irrelevant without any development early on? Why build a relationship between the detective and the psychiatrist when they've only known each other a few hours and it amounts to nothing because apparently they die at the end anyway? Why? Why? Why?
As I've stated none of the characters are developed. Because there's no opening to introduce them we have to go on their actions in these moments alone. The villain is quite literally described by his mental conditions (he has a Cain Complex or something); the detective is divorcing his wife and he falls in love with the psychiatrist. Honestly that's it, he kinda seems like a crappy detective too. There's a scene where they're trying to figure out why the bad guy put a massive diagram of the city with the stadium circled. Hmmm... let me think? Could it be he intends to go there? Maybe? Let's just wait ten minutes for our detective to figure it out, he'll get there eventually. He's so slow on the uptake. He literally sees the bad guy and just drives off shrugging it off as what, a hallucination? The psychiatrist has no development either so that's great. She starts off a smug woman and ends a smug woman. She's smart and capable of defending herself I guess, and that's about it. Woooo! Great writing. And to compliment this complete lack of character development are our terrible actors who fail to breathe any life into any of these performances. The main villain is especially terrible, overplaying the psycho aspect of his character. It's a trope we've seen played out countless times before, and it's no more fun in this awful Chinese thriller. Please stop.
This film is a confusing mess and that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that it's boring. I just didn't care throughout the entire film about anything that was happening. I didn't care about the protagonists, the main villains or the thousands of sub characters they throw in for literally no reason. Everyone and everything is underdeveloped and the whole film needed a rescripting before they produced this. It's a mess, a hot steaming pile of very unpleasantly smelling mess. It sucks. It's just boring and it sucks and honestly I'm done. It's such a shame because it could have been a novel idea, the whole gambling aspect of it could have played well if they'd thought about the "games" he would play with the detectives, or even remotely bothered to spend time developing him as a villain. But no, none of that will ever happen, so we're stuck with Tik Tok and maybe even Tik Tok 2 at some point, who knows. Please, don't bother watching this. It's not haha bad, it's not even mildly meh. It's just crap. Stay away.
1/10
Okay, here goes. Tik Tok is a Chinese film that I believe is set in Korea. Part of me is reluctant to look it up, because knowing wouldn't solve half of the issues I have with this film. I'll touch briefly on the story here, but know that later I'm going into full spoiler territory. I don't much here for a reason; I'm either trying to entice you to watch something so therefore spoiling it would only ruin it for you, or I'm warning you away from something so you don't really need to know the itty bitty details. But this is a special case. Honestly I don't know why it's rattled me so much. But this isn't my diary, so lets get to it.
Tik Tok is about a Chinese guy called Guo Zhida (Wallace Chung, The Wasted Times) who has taken his brother's wife hostage and rigged a football stadium full of explosives; Korean detective Jiang Chengjun (Jung-jae Lee, Lakewood Plaza Turbo) and Guo's Chinese psychiatrist Yang Xi (Yueting Lang, Love Education) have to find the bombs before it's too late. Okay, right, that was a slog to get through. Suffice to say this is a plot that should have plenty of tension, twists and beautiful turns; and it does, it just does them wrong. From here on out I'm going to go a little ranty, a little spoilery, and a little too complainy. It's not my usual style, it's not professional (I used the word complainy) but I need to get this off my chest. But, if you don't want to read all of what is about to unfold (I don't blame you) this film is a confusing mess from start to finish with ridiculous plot twists that you see from a mile off and a payoff that sequel baits when really this film doesn't deserve any more screen time. With that said, let's get on with it.
The plot begins what feels like midway into a different film. We start with Guo in a therapy session and our Korean hero swooping in to save the day and make some arrests. The problem is the whole first 30 minutes are completely nonsensical. Not only do we not know who any of the characters are, and I mean any, but we also don't really understand what's going on. To make matters worse the characters all speak three different languages (more on that later) which makes things thrice as confusing. The plot seems to pick up around 30 minutes in, where characters have needlessly explained the plot to us, when really it should have developed naturally. I'm amazed I'm about to write this, but this film needed more time, as in this waste of a film needed to be longer. Honestly, it could have saved it. None of these characters are developed or fleshed out, so when the twist at the end is revealed we just don't care. You see there's two brothers, Guo Zhida and Guo Zhihua; they're twins. And we're supposed to believe that the villain we follow the whole film is Guo Zhida, when in reality it's his twin brother. He had this whole complex plan to steal money from an illegal gambling ring he owes money to, and this film is that complex plan. Except when I say complex, I mean stupidly ridiculous that needed everything, and I mean everything to go perfectly. It's so so stupid. But because we are lacking that initial thirty minute development of the detective, of the two brothers and of the psychiatrist, we end up not caring that it's one brother and not the other; what difference does it make? On occasion the film will cut to this other brother, or it'll cut to this illegal gambling ring, but whenever it does it completely goes off the rails. It feels like you're watching an entirely different movie. Urrgh this is annoying! But it's worse, much worse.
So the main villain leads the detective and psychiatrist into the stadium to recover the bombs, and the whole time they're acting as if they're playing a game; to be precise his game. He asks them questions and if they get them right he tells them where the bombs are. The first issue here is that it's clear they're setting this villain up to be a Hannibal Lecter type character, a real smart arse who's much better than the silly detective who will eventually outsmart him. But once again, to beat a dead horse, there's no development, so we don't really know this to be true, he just sort of acts that way undeservedly. Hannibal Lecter works because we get the initial meeting between the two, but these guys don't meet until the stadium, in fact they're separated for a good chunk of the film. The only character he truly interacts with is his psychiatrist, but he doesn't seem to care about messing with her as much as he does the detective. To make matters worse the games he plays are so stupid. The first is he asks a simple question, "Who is Cristiano Ronaldo's son?" What is this, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? This question is so random even the actors seemed confused; the whole scene plays out really weirdly, as if everyone knew it was a crappy script. To find the answer to this question the detective rings his wife who he's divorcing (quite literally his only development) and it's the only other time (other than the beginning) that we hear of this divorce. He rings her to ask if she knows the answer, but of course the conversation derails into stuff about their divorce; it's played off as if the villain knew this was going to happen, so he could use this call to get under the detective's skin, but how on earth does he know that the detective didn't just know the answer, or even that it would be his wife the detective called? This is so convoluted. The whole football theme is just weird as well. They use the match to build tension; I believe somewhere during the film its mentioned that if the red team don't win then the stadium blows up. So the red team lose for a while. But then when they win it doesn't matter because all the bombs are disarmed, plus it was never his plan to blow it up anyway. And yet they still use it to build tension as if it has any baring whatsoever on the plot. Why? WHY?
And that's kinda my question for a lot of elements in the film. Why have the characters speak in English, Chinese and Korean, why not have the film set in China with everyone speaking in Chinese. Their English accents are horrendous and incomprehensible, the Korean actor's are all dubbed when they speak Chinese and its awful. Like why bother? Why not just have them all speak Chinese, or just find a Korean actor who can speak Chinese normally? Why is it set during a football match when the plot has no baring on football whatsoever? Why not just have one brother, why have the twist, it's irrelevant without any development early on? Why build a relationship between the detective and the psychiatrist when they've only known each other a few hours and it amounts to nothing because apparently they die at the end anyway? Why? Why? Why?
As I've stated none of the characters are developed. Because there's no opening to introduce them we have to go on their actions in these moments alone. The villain is quite literally described by his mental conditions (he has a Cain Complex or something); the detective is divorcing his wife and he falls in love with the psychiatrist. Honestly that's it, he kinda seems like a crappy detective too. There's a scene where they're trying to figure out why the bad guy put a massive diagram of the city with the stadium circled. Hmmm... let me think? Could it be he intends to go there? Maybe? Let's just wait ten minutes for our detective to figure it out, he'll get there eventually. He's so slow on the uptake. He literally sees the bad guy and just drives off shrugging it off as what, a hallucination? The psychiatrist has no development either so that's great. She starts off a smug woman and ends a smug woman. She's smart and capable of defending herself I guess, and that's about it. Woooo! Great writing. And to compliment this complete lack of character development are our terrible actors who fail to breathe any life into any of these performances. The main villain is especially terrible, overplaying the psycho aspect of his character. It's a trope we've seen played out countless times before, and it's no more fun in this awful Chinese thriller. Please stop.
This film is a confusing mess and that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that it's boring. I just didn't care throughout the entire film about anything that was happening. I didn't care about the protagonists, the main villains or the thousands of sub characters they throw in for literally no reason. Everyone and everything is underdeveloped and the whole film needed a rescripting before they produced this. It's a mess, a hot steaming pile of very unpleasantly smelling mess. It sucks. It's just boring and it sucks and honestly I'm done. It's such a shame because it could have been a novel idea, the whole gambling aspect of it could have played well if they'd thought about the "games" he would play with the detectives, or even remotely bothered to spend time developing him as a villain. But no, none of that will ever happen, so we're stuck with Tik Tok and maybe even Tik Tok 2 at some point, who knows. Please, don't bother watching this. It's not haha bad, it's not even mildly meh. It's just crap. Stay away.
1/10
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