• Home
• Now Showing
• Showtimes
• Coming Soon
• Box Office
• Top Rated Movies
• Y! Star Reviewers

"My Wife Is A Gangster 3" stars the sultry Shu Qi as Aryeong, the daughter of a Hong Kong triad boss, Lim (Ti Lung), who has gone into hiding in South Korea. She goes to Korea under the protection of wannabe tough guy Gi-Chul and his underlings. Aryeong, being chased by her Hong Kong enemies, is forced to unveil her martial arts skills and put them to test at a showdown when she returns to Hong Kong.

This is one of the most uneven gangster-comedies that you can find, with scenes so different from one another that they appear to be cut from separate movies.

Scene one: Amidst some half-naked, Middle-Eastern belly dancers, nasal nymph Shu Qi (who doesn't seem to be returning to porno any time soon) pouts her trademark lips disapprovingly as her character, Lim Aryeong, endures some harassment from rival gangsters at a banquet. Her triad boss daddy (Ti Lung) lets her demonstrate some swordplay to diffuse the situation but it still comes to blows.

Before you know it, Aryeong is framed for the murder of a gang leader and has to leave Hong Kong. She chooses Korea as a destination because her estranged birth mother is from there and she wants to find her. On arrival, affiliated Korean gangster Gi-chul, (Lee Beom-soo, the worst excuse for a thug you will ever see), is assigned to protect her, oblivious to her identity as a skilled martial arts exponent, let alone a daughter of the underworld. The two of them go around dodging more gangsters, while entertaining the prospect of falling for each other.

Action? Nothing too dangerous, sexy or even important ever happens. We're floated here and there to sample some drama and bad body-doubling (rather obvious in some stunts), while we laugh at Beom-soo's character who turns out to be the only memorable performance in this film.

Humour? Well, it is funny in patches, but most of it is really about the language misunderstandings between Aryeong, Gi-chul and their bumbling translator. Paced very oddly indeed, the bulk of the leisurely horsing-around in Korea feels too idyllic for any gangster action to be convincing. There wasn't even a satisfying resolution to the 'lost mother' bit. If anything, it looks suspiciously like a three-quel made to ride on the success of the earlier two, to which it isn't even related.

Is this more than a Shu Qi vehicle? My Wife Is A Gangster 3 will never become a classic, but with all things considered, it isn't the worst you could do for a date movie. However, if I see Shu Qi pout one more time...