The Touch (2002) Review

The Touch | Blu-ray (Imprint)

Director: Peter Pau
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ben Chaplin, Richard Roxburgh, Dane Cook, Kenneth Tsang, Brandon Chang, Margaret Wang, Winston Chao, Zhenhai Kou
Running Time: 103 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Imagine for a minute that the year is 2000 and you’re Michelle Yeoh. You’ve just gained an international level of fame thanks to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, garnering far more attention than when you were cast in a 007 movie, and the question of what to do next looms large on the horizon. The answer of course was to strike while the iron is hot. Set up your own production company – Mythical Films – and produce an epic Indiana Jones (or an updated take on Magnificent Warriors for those who were already fans!) style action adventure. Take on the starring role, contribute to the script, bring in established actors from Hollywood, shoot the whole thing in English, and let’s hire Skywalker Sound for the sound design! While we’re at it, grab CTHD’s director of photography Peter Pau to helm it, and spend the next 2 years travelling around the farthest reaches of China to film it. The result could only be one thing – epic.

Instead though, the result was The Touch, and if you were going to call it epic anything, then epic disaster would be the most accurate. It’s hard to call Yeoh’s next film after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon anything other than a misfire, and it never did become the next global box office smash it was intended to be. Miramax purchased the rights for U.S. distribution, who were so shocked at the horrendous CGI dominated finale, they included a clause allowing them to re-shoot the special effects themselves. Is that the first time for such a thing to happen in cinema history? They also cut 20 minutes for the planned theatrical release, one which ultimately never happened. To further confound the productions woes, it was embarrassingly put forward as Hong Kong’s official entry for the best Foreign Language Film at the 2002 Oscars, only for the Academy to reject it because, you guessed it – it’s 99% in English.

So just what exactly went so wrong with The Touch!? The story revolves around a brother and sister pair of acrobats, played by Yeoh and Brandon Chang, who work for a travelling circus called ‘The Touch’. It’s never really explained why it’s called ‘The Touch’, so we’ll just go with it. While Yeoh and Chang are biological siblings, they have an adopted brother who’s gone rogue, with British actor Ben Chaplin (The Thin Red Line) using the skills that Yeoh’s father taught them to become a thief. His latest mission involves stealing the Heart of Dunhuang, a green heart shaped artifact that’s key to finding the crystalised remains of a 13^th century monk with the power to grant immortality. Naturally, a villain is after them, and Chaplin has been hired by a treasure collecting Richard Roxburgh (Mission: Impossible II) to do the deed.

Oh by the way, Yeoh and Chaplin used to be in a relationship before he went rogue, but the important thing is he was adopted when he was already a teenager, so that’s ok. Nothing weird going on here. Thanks to some muddled plot logic, it turns out the Heart of Dunhuang is destined to be protected by a pair of acrobats, and since Yeoh and Chang are “heirs to the longest tradition of acrobats in China”, what are the chances that the protectors turn out be the very same!? Chaplin clues in as well, so then re-steals the antique from Roxburgh and gives it to Yeoh for safekeeping, who doesn’t believe in any of this superstitious hokum. However Chang does, so ends up eloping with his girlfriend and the Heart to find the monks remains alone, only to fall into the hands of Roxburgh. Can Yeoh save her brother and future sister-in-law? Will Yeoh and Chaplin rekindle their romance? Will Yeoh stop Roxburgh before he becomes immortal!?

One of the biggest issues with The Touch is that director Peter Pau’s expectedly gorgeous shooting of some of China’s most stunning landscapes is completely offset by the daytime TV movie of the week character interactions. The script is truly painful, veering from groan inducing comedy (often attributed to Roxburgh’s righthand henchman, played by Dane Cook – Simon Sez) to fortune cookie wisdom (expect lines like “It is finished. It begins” from the monks). Full of banal dialogue that, if The Touch were to be released in 2026, would almost certainly be accused of being AI generated, it becomes increasingly difficult to care about much of what unfolds onscreen. Chaplin fares the best out of everyone, with his rogue with a heart of gold character at least being likeable, but really, even the most ardent Michelle Yeoh fan will find themselves tiring from the number of glowing full screen closeups we get of her face.

The most heinous offender to the onscreen woes is Brandon Chang, playing Yeoh’s brother, for whom The Touch was his debut. In the making of Yeoh describes Chang as her protégé, and reminisces on how Peter Pau scolded him more than 10 times on the first day of filming due to his performance. She concludes by saying “what’s bitter now will become sweet in future.” Clearly she was the only one who held such an optimistic outlook, as Chang’s only other screen appearance would be alongside Yeoh in 2004’s Silver Hawk (also the only other movie made by her production company Mythical Films), after which he’d disappear. His short-lived film career is understandable, as his performance is a chore to watch, including an unintentionally hilarious character death reaction that somehow ended up in the final cut (in both the original and Miramax version!).

Of course, at the end of the day we’re here for the action, an element of Hong Kong cinema that can redeem even the ropiest of productions. Here it’s Venom alumni Phillip Kwok (Hard Boiled, The Story of Ricky) on choreography duty, who would have come fresh from choreographing Brotherhood of the Wolf in Europe. Tragically there’s little redemption to be found in the action scenes, with an opening circus performance that sees Yeoh and Chang facing off being the lengthiest fight on offer, and also the most inconsequential. We do get brief glimpses of Yeoh’s physical prowess, initially when a bunch of lackeys turn up at the circus grounds in an attempt to steal the Heart, and again when she infiltrates Roxburgh’s lair to rescue Chaplin, offering up some silk scarf-fu. However the scenes feel fleeting, and members of Roxburgh’s entourage that seem to be hinted at as latter opponents unfortunately never come to pass.

Then of course, there’s that finale. The Touch is a strong contender for the most disastrous early 2000’s use of CGI for its pièce de resistance (not a claim to make lightly considering the CGI Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson that closed out The Mummy Returns less than a year prior). Taking place in a booby-trapped lair in the Gobi Desert, the poor digital compositing, jerky wirework, and a frequent disregard for the laws of physics make it a shambles of an action sequence. Featuring a (CGI) flame engulfed floor, Yeoh spends the majority of it swinging around the chamber Tarzan style, knocking the bad guys off the pillars which they’re balanced on top of. I feel like Stanley Tong may have watched the finale of The Touch as a kind of ‘What Not to Do’ for his own finale of The Myth 3 years later. To top everything off, Yeoh gets the facepalm line “Even the Earth is against you!”, which makes me even sadder that she contributed to the script.

In the closing scene it’s hinted there could be further adventures of Yeoh and Chaplin, a proposition that expectedly never came to pass, with perhaps the closest Yeoh would get to appearing in another Indiana Jones style action adventure being her role in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor 6 years later (which thankfully didn’t feature a CGI Dwanye ‘The Rock’ Johnson). Relievedly The Touch would only represent a minor blip in Yeoh’s filmography, and to this day she remains one of the few Asian actresses who’s successfully balanced a career across both Hollywood and China. Perhaps the one lesson she took away from her time working as a producer was that her real strength lies in front of the camera.  As it stands The Touch serves as yet another cinematic lesson that, no matter how charismatic the lead or breathtaking the location shooting, they’ll never be enough to replace a shoddy story and weak characters.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3/10