With an effective marketing strategy, The Twins Effect captured the eyes of the public way before the production began and had soon become one of the most anticipated Hong Kong movies of 2003. And thanks to this successful promotional package, the film did attract enormous audience to the cinema when it came out and won beautifully at the box office.

Although positioned as an action adventure movie with a major plot centering upon the pursuit of the treasure "Day for Night" between the good guys and the bad guys, The Twins Effect does not actually belong to the pure action genre. It is because a great portion of the film is dedicated to the love affairs among two pairs of lovers. If you analyze the structure of the film in a more systematic way, you'll probably notice that it can be divided into three parts: The romantic encounter between Helen (Charlene Choi) and Prince Kazaf (Edison Chen), the love plot between Gipsy (Gillian Chung) and Reeve (Ekin Cheng) and the evil plot of the Count (Mickey Hardt). Among these three divisions, it seems like the focus is placed more on the romantic encounter between Helen and Prince Kazaf, and they are in fact the two characters that share the most screening time.

As the co-director, Donnie Yen's contribution is notable. All of the action scenes are well choreographed. Every actor fights well, including Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung, who obviously had no experience in martial arts before the shooting of this film. Donnie Yen did successfully turn them into two acrobatic fighters who can really kick ass. Talking about the quality of the fights, you can easily notice the "Matrix Effect" from some of the scenes. For instance, the poses of the vampires and the use of slow-motion effects are among those which seem to have drawn inspiration from The Matrix. The only major problem of this film is that there are too many fist fight scenes. If the vampires can be killed easily with the vampire sword, why the fist fights? There are actually much that can be explored in a vampire movie, however, with a heavy emphasis on the popcorn action aspect, there isn't much time left for a more sophisticated plot development. Furthermore, the love plots are also quite weak as compared to the glamorous action scenes that are packed with wonderful special effects.

The cast of this film comprises of all the popular singers from EEG. From the ultra popular Jackie Chan to Twins, and from Ekin Cheng to Edison Chen, almost every big name from the company is reserved a spot. Fans need not worry as Charlene and Gillian look great in their eye-catching costumes. Jackie Chan's cameo is also interesting. Apart from the pointless wedding ceremony, his slapstick action scene is without doubt one of the funniest moments of the film. One interesting characteristic is that, following the "weak male strong female" trend, almost every male character in this film is either too weak or too passive. For instance, Jackie Chan has to rely on Charlene to save him from the mess at the wedding ceremony, and Ekin is always so passive and fails to express his love toward Gillian.

The Twins Effect is an entertaining popcorn movie that is visually stunning. However, what it lacks is a brilliant and logical plot. If you are looking for another Infernal Affairs or something to muse, this probably isn't your cup of tea, otherwise, just sit back for a good 107-minute and enjoy all the exciting actions it offers.

Cool guy(s) - Jackie Chan


Reviewed by: Kantorates