Dispatches from HK + HKIFF 2019: Pad Man, We Are Legends, Masquerade Hotel, The Load, Manta Ray

The life of Indian inventor and entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham has been covered in films before, from fictional films like 2017's Phullu to documentaries such as Menstrual Man (2013) and the Oscar-winning short Period. End of Sentence. (2018). This latest fictional account of Muruganatham's life, Pad Man, is a crowd pleasing entertainer that captures the philosophy of the real Pad Man's work, as well as extending the conversation about how menstruation is perceived in countries like India.

In this version of the tale, Lakshmikant (Akshay Kumar) works as a mechanic and all around metal worker in his small village. When he learns of his wife's menstrual period (and how she is forced to stay at home because of this) he decides to take action. This will prove to be more of a challenge. India is almost overwhelmingly patriarchal, and menstruation is either taboo or simply not talked about. This is not a new thing in the history of man, and India is no exception.

Because the culture is so ingrained in them, even the women that Lakshmi tries to help are locked into this mentality that they are at fault for their woman-ness. Lakshmi tries again and again to make people understand that this isn't right, and slowly but surely tries to understand why these women think this way (even going as far as to experience for himself what menstruation feel like.) But the true epiphany is when Lakshmi realizes he is part of the problem: it's only when a woman shares the message, and when Lakshmi helps women help and empower themselves that he achieves success.

The film also works as a fun crash course in grassroots R&D and marketing, showing a product from conception to prototyping to mass production. Either way, Pad Man is a fun watch.

Daniel Chan's We Are Legends is nicely shot, giving us some great MMA action scenes. That said, it's far too silly for its own good, and the rest of the film doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Very loosely based on a true story, the film  focuses on two orphaned brothers, Jack (Edward Ma) and Bunny (Lam Yiu-sing). Jack is a straight up successful MMA fighter, training in the dojo headed by their foster father. But Jack lacks discipline and is overall a major asshole, and it gets in the way of his fights. Bunny, on the other hand, is more of a brawler, electing to participate in underground fights rather than fight MMA. When Jack finally eats humble pie thanks to fellow MMA pro Jason (Jason Li), it's time for Bunny to enter the spotlight.

Filled with veteran martial arts actors and martial artists, the film should've been at least fun, but ultimately little of it works. It's hard to relate to Jack's character (a better film probably would've followed Bunny or even Jason instead) and by the time Jack gets better, the film is 10 minutes away from ending. Tonally the film is all over the place, being comedic when it shouldn't be, and being serious when things get a little silly.

In fact, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to describe a film as a dojo full of assholes challenging a decent, reputable martial arts outfit. And when, in a martial arts film of all things, you find yourself rooting for the enemy, you know something's gone wrong somewhere.

From the director that brought us GTO and Hero, Masquerade Hotel feels like a J-drama compressed into the space of two hours, featuring episodic plotlines in addition to its central mystery. In this (star studded) adaptation of Keigo Higashino's novel, Takuya Kimura plays Nitta, a gruff detective tasked with figuring out a series of serial murders. When the location of the next murder is found out to be a local hotel, the police department gets on the case and posts people undercover. Nitta is paired up with Yamagishi (Masami Nagasawa,) one of the hotel's best employees. Through undercover work, Nitta not only investigates the case, but also discovers he's actually not that bad as a hotelier either.

The central mystery isn't that complicated; the film throws out enough clues that it isn't hard to figure out who the culprit is. However, the journey that takes us there is still quite enjoyable. Nagasawa and Kimura have great chemistry, and the variety of mini-cases that make up most of the movie are all interesting.

That said, perhaps it would have been better to make the movie a series, just so that we'd have more time to get to know the characters. What we eventually get isn't so bad, though.

One of the most striking features of Ognjen Glavonic's The Load is how drab it is. Though touted as a thriller, nothing in the film is remotely tense. Even though it shares the same thematic roots as Glavonic's own Depth Two (2016), it explores a different dimension of the Kosovo war. But this drabness reflects something even more profound about the capacity of everyday people for unspeakable evil, and ultimately how mundane it turns out to be.

This road movie follows Vlada, a truck driver tasked with driving mysterious cargo across Serbia to the capital, Belgrade. It's unclear what the cargo contains, or if Vlada really knows what's inside the truck. The film takes us through the Serbian countryside during the height of NATO's bombing runs on the country. Amongst relative peace and calm, there are hints of the destruction in the background: a flaming automobile or two, or maybe shades of artillery in the distance.

When we do learn of the contents of the cargo, things gain a bit more resonance. And an anecdote near the end about a missing lighter becomes a meditation on how people, realizing the evil they've done because of their knowledge of war, decide to pass something else to the next generation instead - a tape signifying the determination to live on instead of a remembrance of death.

We end this year's slew of dispatches with Manta Ray, the  full length directorial debut of cinematographer Phuttiphong Aroonpheng. It begins with a dedication to the Rohingya Muslims, but it is an ode to all refugees. It tells the story of an unnamed fisherman (Wanlop Rungkamjad), who discovers a mute fisherman (Aphisit Hama) in mangroves near his home. The fisherman takes care of his new charge, but it becomes clear that he is somehow complicit in what happened to his new friend, and his actions constitute guilt over what he's done.

Their relationship evolves over the course of the film; the fisherman names his mute friend Thongchai after the popular Thai singer Thongchai McIntyre, based on one of Thongchai's earliest and most popular songs, Hard-Sai Sai-Lom Song-Rao, (Beach, Wind and the Two of Us). He might be the perfect representation of their relationship, as Thongchai is popular in both Thailand and Myanmar, signifying the best of both worlds.

Their relationship becomes something more intimate, yet not overtly so. Their identity seems to blend together at times, especially near the end of the film. But perhaps the real tragedy of the film is at the end, when Thongchai, untethered from the house that gave him back his life, becomes a refugee once more, his cultural identity melding and fading due to constant displacement, adrift in the darkness of the sea.