What! The Heist (PG13)
104 minutes, opens on Thursday
3 stars
The story: Choy Gor (Jack Lim) is a criminal in debt to his leader, Big Boss (Henry Thia). Freshly released from prison, Choy hatches an audacious plan: fix the national lottery so that his sequence of numbers will be drawn. Chao Yan Fatt (Mark Lee), an acclaimed actor in desperate need of money to save a loved one, joins the operation, along with magician and actor Bao Ya Gu (Singapore comedian and YouTube personality Jaspers Lai). The police are always one step behind as the gang uses its skills in acting, computers and sleight of hand to achieve the impossible.
Buoyed by in-jokes and cheekiness – but not a lot of logic, which is par for the course in a Chinese New Year comedy – this caper comedy squeaks through with a passing grade.
Too often, local comedies get by with a bare-bones story, dressed up with improvised jokes and heavy-handed notes of tragedy, all wrapped in a moral lesson inserted just before the credits roll.
This production feels more disciplined and coherent than usual. There is less back-and-forth dialogue-based jocularity and the editing feels tighter, mostly because there is a crime procedural to get through.
The howdunnit part of the story, involving a daring raid on the site of where the national lottery is held, is done fairly competently. While audacious, it is not cartoonishly so. That is, if you cut the film-makers some slack.
Nothing is taken seriously here. Director Matt Lai keeps the tone frothy enough that the scheme that underpins the heist, while less than convincing, is at least entertaining.
Thankfully, while there is some sentimentality – from a dying child, no less – the melodrama feels integral to the story and drives Chao’s arc.
Lee’s Chao Yan Fatt, by the way, has a name that resembles that of Hong Kong star Chow Yun Fat. That is just an in-joke because, in the world of the movie, Chow’s existence is not mentioned. It is merely a throwaway pun in a movie heavy with non sequiturs.
Also, Lai plays a version of his falsetto-voiced, buck-toothed character made famous on YouTube. In other words, his online personality of Bao Ya Gu exists in the Heist-verse.
In some scenes, Lee and Lim look on at Lai, looking as if they are barely able to contain their laughter. The trio’s disparate energies hang together just long enough to make it to the end.
Hot take: This blend of caper action and comedy has a semblance of a plot and lands a couple of jokes, making this a decent if forgettable festive season watch.
