"100 Ways To Murder Your Wife" Chinese DVD Cover
Director: Kenny Bee
Producer: Wong Jing
Writer: Law Kai Yui
Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Joey Wang, Kenny Bee, Anita Mui, Wu Ma, Anthony Chan
Running Time: 91 min.
By Numskull
For a black comedy, this is pretty grey. Chow Yun-Fat and Kenny Bee are two noteworthy football/soccer players (Fa and Roberto, respectively) who get drunk off their asses one night and agree to kill each other’s wives. Fa’s wife Hsiao Hsien (Joey Wang) is a friendly, cutesy housepet of a woman whom he is convinced is sleeping around behind his back and is plotting to kill HIM. Bee’s spouse, Fang (Anita Mui, who gives the best performance of the main actors), is a nagging harpy who loves nothing more than pointing out her husband’s failures and shortcomings in front of other people. One hangover after the deal is struck, Roberto has lost his enthusiasm, but Fa declares that he has kept his end of the bargain and that Hsiao Hsien must die. In between half-assed attempts on her life, Roberto gets pretty chummy with her, which further enrages Fa.
The last third of the movie has a different (and worse) feel to it and suffers from excessive coincidence and an icky, gooey, preposterous kiss-and-make-up ending. This is an extension of the film’s key problem: it just isn’t nasty enough. The characters need to be more despicable, the dialogue more heated, and the general tone more cynical for this thing to really work. There are some mildly amusing moments, but true black comedy in a severed, blood-gushing vein is what’s really required here. Wong Jing produced, so it’s no wonder the film is more silly than nasty.
I will leave you with this snafu and vivid mental image: Fa and Hsiao Hsien have a dog named Nancy. Presumably, this dog is a female (or a bitch, if you will). However, when we see…”Nancy”…for the first time, her/his/its cock and balls are swinging all over the place. You don’t have to be some perverted, beast-humping redneck to notice. As long as you’re looking at the screen, you’ll see it. I will not, however, go so far as to say that this is one of the most interesting things in this lame, boring film. That would be…you know…weird.
Numskull’s Rating: 4/10
