Born To Be King

Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: I havn't seen any of the other Young and Dangerous movies, but Born to be King is successful as a standalone film (apparently this is the 6th, in addition to there being two prequels), though it probably would be more enjoyable to have greater familiarity with the background stories.

**Plot Summary**
Born to be King has a number of sub-plots, but is centered around a Taiwanese/Chinese/Hong Kong gang's dischord after its leader retires, leaving Lui, who has just returned from a stateside education, to be the new leader. Lui is uninterested in being leader, so he and the top gang memebers and sect leaders set out to decide who amongst themselves ought to be. The protagonists are Chicken, recently married into a Yakuza family and a Hong Kong sect leader considered one of the primary candidates, and his best friend, Nam, who, while presently having troubles in his love life, manages to help out Chicken whenever he's needed. Various assasinations, ambushes, and plots are exposed, leading the gang members to question each others ambitions, and from here the rest of the movie branches.
**

Despite featuring a mostly terrible soundtrack and some stylistic excess (which really ruins the action scenes, but seems to serve the rest of the movie), Born to be King is an enterntaining gangster flic depicting events that are never too blind to reality, posh, serendipitous, or depraved and featuring relatively human characters (at least compared to most other gangster movies).

Certainly worth a viewing... more of a rental (I don't see myself watching this more than once, although it has inspired me to plan to pick up the rest of the Young and Dangerous movies.)

Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Review: Let me preface this by saying that I LOVE anything with Ekin Cheng in it (see my other reviews) however this video was just plain tedious!

This is the story of Nam (Ekin Cheng)and his best friend Chicken (Jordan Chan), Nam and Chicken are members of a gang, when Nam gets promotion to chief "Boss," his life becomes even MORE complicated. The plot mostly revolves mostly around some nonsense about a wedding and a rival gang Taiwanese San Luen gang, however most of this is quite difficult to follow - and there is a reason for this. This video is part of the Young and Dangerous series, and viewers are expected to be familiar with the material and the characters from previous episodes.

If you are interested in following or even understanding the events in "Born to be King," I would recommend viewing the rest of the Young and Dangerous series first. The Triad series is one of the most popular and longest running gangster series in HK.