By Shawne Wang
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Neo was in excellent humour during a press conference held this afternoon to promote the sequel in Sentosa`s Equarius Hotel. He even vowed to the media that he would follow through on his earlier promise to skinny-dip in the Singapore River if the first film made more money at the box office than Money No Enough.
“We have to go through with it! First, we have to ask the police if we`re permitted to do it, and do some research about whether we can swim in the river because there are a lot of boats in it. But we will keep our promise. If we can`t do it in Singapore for legal reasons, we will definitely think of another way we won`t disappoint everybody!
On the subject of his films, Neo stressed that they were two halves of one whole, and had to be watched with that in mind. “Parts One and Two actually tell one entire story, but we had to cut the film into two because it was running too long. You`ll only really understand the whole story if you watch Part Two.
For him, the biggest selling point of the sequel is the value it places on brotherly camaraderie. “The interaction of people from all different backgrounds and walks of life this is something that you need if you want to live a good, meaningful life, and I think anyone can identify with that.
The nine young men who make up the Ah Boys (and their commanders) of the movie`s title Joshua Tan, Maxi Lim, Wang Weiliang, Noah Yap, Tosh Zhang, Aizuddin Naseer, Ridhwan Azman, Charlie Goh and Luke Lee trooped onstage to affirm that they had indeed formed their own band of brothers through making the movie together.
It was clear they shared a familiar bond of fun and friendship: at one point, Zhang provided the beat-boxing rhythm for Lee to bust a few dance moves, and all of them weighed in to save Goh from requests to show off his chiseled body during the press conference.
The first-time actors weren`t the only members of the cast who were doing something new with Ah Boys. Veteran actors Richard Low and Irene Ang, who play Tan`s on-screen parents, felt that audiences would get to see them both in a new light even though they weren`t really the stars of the show.
Low explained that he had been in several of Neo`s movies, but each time, his director has pushed his limits, “because he thinks I can rise to the challenge. Jack also wants to show that he can get something new out of actors he`s been working with for a long time.
Ang, too, promised that audiences would get to see a side of her they`ve never seen before that of Irene Ang as a serious dramatic actress. “Although we don`t have a lot of screen-time, you`ll see a kind of acting from [me] that you`ve never seen before.
Prominent local blogger Mr Brown (a.k.a. Mr Lee Kin Mun) makes a hilarious cameo in the film as a no-nonsense “assessor during the recruits` field camp one which required him, quite literally, to run out of his comfort zone. With a mix of horror and amusement, he related how he had no idea after reading the script that filming his part would be the equivalent of “three days of physical torture but it was. “I think I ran more in those three days than I ran in my army days!
What proved even more challenging was that he had to run for his life from an imaginary wild boar in multiple takes. “[I was told] to put a lot of emotion into it Golden Horse awards kind of running!
As befitting the approaching festive season, the press conference came to an end with the director and his cast tossing some yu sheng for good luck ahead of the sequel`s cinematic release on Friday.
Something tells us Ninja Company Section Two will do just fine. Huat ah!
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Ah Boys To Men Part 2 opens in Singapore on 1 February 2013. Check local cinema listings for marathon sessions of the entire duology!