Huang xin jia qi

This film has a beautiful package--gorgeous settings, beautiful stars, astonishing photography--but surprisingly void of content. Suspending disbelief at the plot's central conceit is nigh on impossible, for starters... then, the contrivance of the kidnapping--which plays into many foreigners's worst prejudices and fears about the Arab world, and is relatively unfounded in fact--is laughable. Not as laughable as R. Junna's performance, though: basically, she utters dry English lines without conviction, or screams/cries/wails hysterically. Anita Mui's embers smolder and flame, but she seems out of place in a film of (poorly directed?) second-rate actors. I was bored silly through most of the Morocco sequences: the characterization was stereotypical (who is Mike, and why should we care about him? why on earth would any woman be interested in the callow Chinese doctor, is unimaginable, etc.) and the plot painfully predictable. A voyeur's paradise, maybe, but a critic's nightmare.