{"id":21602,"date":"2016-07-27T00:22:25","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T04:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=21602"},"modified":"2016-07-26T14:30:32","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T18:30:32","slug":"the-laundryman-2015-new-york-asian-film-festival-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/27\/the-laundryman-2015-new-york-asian-film-festival-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"The Laundryman (2015) [New York Asian Film Festival 2016]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"thelaundryman\"<\/a>A hit man who works for a laundry company as a cover up grows a conscience.\u00a0 He\u2019s highly trained and excels at his job, however, for a while now, he is plagued by ghosts and he must find out what they want from him in order to restore some sort of peace to his life.\u00a0 To do this, he enlists the help of a cute but possible clueless clairvoyant.\u00a0 Through all of it, he finds out more about his victims, his boss, and himself.<\/p>\n

The Laundryman is a hybrid horror\/comedy\/action film by director Chung Lee and written by Yu-Hsyun Chen and Chung Lee.\u00a0 The tale built here fills the complex task of mixing multiple genres without going into parody or satire or become a send-off\/homage to its genres.\u00a0 Here the mix of the genres works very well and has the story evolves its elements just work.\u00a0 However, the comedy levels are more present in the first third or so of the film and then occasionally throughout the rest of the film.\u00a0 The comedy works because the viewer is not hit over the head with it.<\/p>\n

That being said, some of the scenes are completely ridiculous in the best way possible.\u00a0 The horror, mainly from the ghosts and not much blood outside of a few short scenes works here as well.\u00a0 The ghosts here are not meant to scare but they work so well with the story.\u00a0 The first fight sequence is fantastic, the way its written and shot make it really fun.\u00a0 The rest of the fighting is also entertaining.\u00a0 Getting all of these elements together creates a really fun whole.<\/p>\n

The casting here feels rather perfect for the story and the style.\u00a0 Hsiao-chuan (Joseph) Chang is an entertaining lead.\u00a0 He has a charisma that helps carry the whole film.\u00a0 His acting is just about perfect for the material.\u00a0 It may not be the top performance seen at New York Asian Film Festival, but it\u2019s still a damn good one.\u00a0 Supporting him is Regina Wan as the clairvoyant and Sonia Sui as the boss, both opposites until the end.\u00a0 Their performances show excellent talent as they both do extremely well.\u00a0 The cast for the ghosts is fantastic too and they manage to keep a straight face through some truly ridiculous situations.<\/p>\n

For a partially horror movie, the effects are not super prominent but what we\u2019re given is well done.\u00a0 The CGI is good and blends well in the scenes where it is present.\u00a0 It\u2019s not overly used which avoids it becoming an annoyance.\u00a0 Outside of the effects, the film looks really good, it grabs the attention from the get go with its colorful representation of Taiwan and the life of a man who, by all accounts, could be living a very grim life.\u00a0 Most of the film, besides the flashbacks, feels all so chipper.\u00a0 In general, the film looks very good.<\/p>\n

The Laundryman is a really fun, funny, and entertaining film.\u00a0 It may be hard to find for a while being a festival title, however it\u2019s absolutely worth checking out.\u00a0 The story is good, the acting is on point, the fighting \u201cpunchy\u201d, and the ending, all the way after the credits, will make you giggle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A hit man who works for a laundry company as a cover up grows a conscience.\u00a0 He\u2019s highly trained and excels at his job, however, for a while now, he is plagued by ghosts and he must find out what they want from him in order to restore some sort of peace to his life.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,113,219,349,367,477,590,1008,1087],"class_list":["post-21602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-asian","tag-comedy","tag-fantasy","tag-foreign","tag-horror","tag-l","tag-supernatural","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21602"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21606,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21602\/revisions\/21606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}