It’s a great day that the Hong Kong multi-award winning actor, Sean Lau Ching Wan (刘青云）arrived to Malaysia for the latest debut movie, The Great Magician. Starring by two famous actor, Tony Leung Chiu Wai（梁朝伟） and Sean Lau Ching Wan, as well the Chinese actor, Zhou Xun , together in this another new element of Chinese New Year festive season blockbuster movie that will bring a new experiences to the audiences.
About 8 years since Sean Lau Ching Wan haven’t back to Malaysia for some promo tour of his movie, this time he brings some surprise for everyone. Well, back to the movie then, what it is talk about ? A mysterious magician Zhang Xian (Tony Leung) catches the eye of local warlord, General Lei Daniu (Sean Lau Ching Wan), who hopes to use him to win the affections of Liu Yin (Zhou Xun), a woman he forced into being his seventh concubine. Unbeknownst to him, Zhang is the fiance of Liu who has been waiting for him to rescue her. Zhang, who was hellbent on destroying General Lei, discovers that the man behind the evil deeds is actually his head butler Liu. To defeat Liu and win back the heart of his love, Zhang pulls out his ultimate magic trick.
Press conference which held at the J.W. Marriot Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Sean Lau takes the chance to talk more about his story on this movie as well as his future vision and wishes for the upcoming year of 2012. He frankly talked about that during his shooting of this movie, they did really trained well on those magician-like move in order to perform just like a professional magician, as the General Lei Daniu of himself, he firstly suspected that the tank in the movie, which is the World War One version of big tank, it cannot moves. However, after the explanation from the crew members of the movie, this tank absolutely can move freely with mobile support and it is a great surprise for him that able him to use the tank and “scare” the people.
In the press conference, Sean Lau also mentioned that his thought about his next movie, by the way, he said that he won’t be accept for another movie in these short period but he have seen some of the great script from other movie as well and planning for another next movie shoot, but still most of the time will be with his wife for holidays and prepare for other plan.
Well, before the press conference, I turned back the time , there is another thing that I wished to mention about this movie which is the press review and press screening for the debut of this “The Great Magician” movie. The media have the first watch of this movie before the Gala Premiere and review about this movie, well here’s my review about this movie then :
Firstly, it’s a great movie with a moral story behind, the golden phrase that always mentioned by the Tony Leung in the movie, “If you keep the faith, if you trust it, it will appear to be reality” , this is what’s more to tell for everyone to dream big and keep your heart steady to realize a dream.
Secondly, there are a lot of sense of humours inside, and quite some “sounds so wrong” kind of jokes that make the whole story laugh like hell. Mostly are from the General Lei Da Niu (starring by Sean Lau Ching Wan), he’s an incredible joker to be frank.
Thirdly, besides Sean Lau, Tony Leung are the mysterious magician that brings a whole team to perform in a taken-over magic performance stage hall, are one of the major attraction in this movie. He performed the western style of magic performance with the addition of clowns, the Arabian, Chinese choreography as well and other of element of surprise which makes the whole thing interesting just like a circus. Much more to say, he mentioned from his overall performances of the magic performance that he performed : “Drama is like our life, our life is just like drama, appreciate every moment you have……” , that’s a best word about this.
Fourth, interesting about the whole movie element, the all 7 wife of the General Lei Da Niu, personally I felt quite funny about them, not only just fight along each other, but just for the sake of General Lei, funny moment on get their best jewellery, compete for anything and much. Besides that, the whole cast in the movie add up some of the special appearance by Tsui Hark, the famous director; Gu Tak Chiu, the famous actor, and much more.
Last thing about this movie, it’s about moral story, it’s about jokes, it’s about magic. It’s a series of combination to use these three element to tell the story of life , to present the world of magic, to understand that everything in our life related to our surrounding. It’s a meaningful story with fun element inside.
I can say that, after my watching on this movie, I felt it’s awesome, it’s never been before seeing Sean Lau and Tony Leung collaborated again in action for some time, it’s stunning action-packed blockbuster with mixture of eastern and western, it’s incredible story. I really recommend everyone to go have a look on this movie. The movie will be on screen at 12 January 2012 on nationwide cinema.
Here are some of the highlight during the press conference :
