Ms J Contemplates Her Choice (石头剪刀布) – Review

 

When it comes to film titles, there’s no need to contemplate Ms J Contemplates Her Choice too much. Its title straightforwardly announces its plot. It revolves around Jo (Kit Chan), a radio personality who is forced to make a series of tough choices after she receives a string of sinister ultimatums from an anonymous caller on air. Each time the person calls in to the radio station, he forces Jo to choose between two complete strangers; the person picked by her will be spared, while the other will be killed. Refuse to make a choice, and both will pay with their lives.

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It’s easy to pass the caller off as a very creepy stalker the first time he makes his call, but when Jo receives more calls of a similar variety, her radio co-host (Tonelli) and her start to take notice. Every time he calls, it is a battle of wits: Jo and her co-host have to try to reason and outsmart him to the best of their ability.

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As far as gimmicks go, Ms J’s one is pretty good, and reminiscent of other films with sociopathic serial killers playing cat-and-mouse games with detectives. The film uses its gimmick well at first, delivering some great pulpy thrills. But it’s when the film tries to get, well, contemplative, that it starts to fall apart; in its second half, it throws in some excruciatingly simplistic philosophising about choices (“I didn’t have a choice!” “We all have a choice!”), as well as cringe-inducing psychologising.

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The psychologising is a bid to lend more plausibility to the film’s plot; director Jason Lai knows how extreme – and possibly foreign – the film’s entire conceit can be to viewers, so he tries to explain the sociopathic caller’s motivations through one of the subplots. But Ms J’s intrigue flags as the caller’s motivations crystallise. These films rarely need to be “relatable” to work: the Joker and Hannibal Lecter are two of the most enduring sociopathic figures in pop culture, and the not knowing – why they are the way they are, why they do the things they do – is precisely what makes them so terrifying.

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Really, sometimes the questions are more important than the answers, and this is something the film isn’t consistent about. It tries to keep you guessing as to Jo’s fate, but it pulls all the stops to remove the mystery from its antagonist. Worse still, the caller’s motivations, because they are so inadequately explained away, actually robs the film of plausibility.

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The film also zigzags across two other subplots, one about Jo’s nephew finding a lost wallet in a temple, and the other, about a young couple going out on a late-night drive which results in tragedy.

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These subplots creep along at a glacial pace and meander about without any clear link to the film’s main plot at first. By the time the film heads towards its climax, though, it’s easy to guess how they are connected to the main plot. But their predictability isn’t so much the problem here; the way they feel contrived is. They constantly distract from the film’s tense main plot, and the way they all come together at the end is haphazard and silly. It becomes clear that certain characters are mere MacGuffins designed to get the film to its faux-contemplative ending. Contrast Ms J to a film like David Fincher’s Zodiac, whose open-endedness actually opened you up to all sorts of real terrors, and the former’s denouement feels wanting, but not in any purposeful way.

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There are many things I enjoyed about Ms J, not least of all Singapore songstress Chan’s performance. Even though she does struggle a little with the film’s more demanding scenes, she’s perfectly at home with the scenes at the radio station, and she has great chemistry with Tonelli and Xiang Yun (who plays her sister). I also admire Lai’s courage in attempting something different from the local slapstick dreck that makes the rounds at cineplexes.

Summary: The film could have worked better if Lai had more conviction in the film’s conceit, stuck to his guns, and denied us the gratification of having simple answers to complex psychological and philosophical questions. As it is, though, the only thought that ran through my head at the end was, “What a pity.”

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Raymond Tan