Brief Story Line
A group of thieves that consisted of their leader Po-chun (Chen Bo-lin - The King of Blaze TV series, The Dreaming Man etc), the master of disguise Uncle Bin (Frederick Lee - Fish Memories, Trinity of Shadows TV series etc), the hacker Kao (Kent Tsai - Haunted House for Sale TV series, Bad Education etc) and the combat specialist Wen Hao (J. C. Lin - Let's Talk About Chu TV series, The Bridge Curse etc) had robbed a bank owned by Chen Hai-jui (Wu Kang-ren - Copycat Killer TV series, Abang Adik etc).
However, when Po-chun's ex girlfriend Shen Su-wen (Cecilia Choi - Beyond the Dream, A Light Never Goes Out etc) was somehow involved, he decided to return all the money to the bank in what they called a reverse heist.
So what would happen to this group and how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
If you read my brief story line above or the synopsis from Netflix, you would understand why I was intrigued with this film. A normal heist itself is already interesting for me but this time it is a reverse heist. So you could imagine how excited I was. I am not sure I have seen any movie with such topic (or maybe I have forgotten), but obviously it was something that I believe would be more fun. And turned out, it was indeed as I expected.
The movie started off brightly where I could immediately feel the light and humorous approach to the story telling. The introduction to the characters were brief but the distinct personality and expertise was clearly shown and made it easy to differentiate. It was pretty enjoyable to watch their chemistry that was changed with the appearance of Su-wen. However, the good part about this film was certainly the reverse heist and the comedy. Just like similar heist movies, the main attraction would be on how to pull it off. But with this group of people whose behavior sometimes could be a bit over the top, they made it look more fun (that cockroach thing was quite hilarious). I also like how they showed it was not that easy to do the reverse heist and also the conclusion. Although the supposed twist was predictable, but the rest was refreshing to see.
I have not seen that many Taiwanese movies or series, so I am unfamiliar with the cast except for Chen Bo-lin whom I have seen in few mainland China series. In general to me they were so so and just played to how their roles were written. Although, Cecilia Choi did not seem too convincing to me sometimes which was kind of surprising considering she had won Hong Kong best actress award back in 2020. There were few more additional support cast like Kerr Hsu (Memory Eclipse TV series etc) as Bank's assistant manager, Vince Kao (Take Me to the River etc) as Mr. Hu and several others.
This movie was directed by Wang Ding-lin who was the director of The 9th Precinct (also available on Netflix) and My Gift. It's a 2024 film that was released during the Chinese new year as there was a brief NY message before the closing credit. Btw, there was a short mid end credit scene but no post end-credit scenes. It has a duration of 109 minutes which I think was OK and not too short considering it need to show the explanations. There was even a bit of action as well to spice things up.
Overall this was a quite entertaining movie for me as it had a rather unique plot of reverse heist with the usual traits you would see in a heist story. Even if it was probably predictable, but the way they did it still managed to fascinate me. The characters were not the deep written type, so no need to expect anything more from them. You might have to lower your expectation if you wish to see something as grand as the Ocean's trilogy. However if your aim is to see a fun and light heist comedy movie, then likely you would enjoy this like I did.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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