The series (well, at least this first episode) doesn’t quite feel like a usual TVB series. It felt different. I felt I was watching a movie instead. Perhaps it was the way it was filmed.
The story starts off in the woods where a group of men were hunting and Vincent ends up getting the wild boar first and they attempt to hunt him down too. The way he was dressed depicted Vincent as being “wild”, which reminded me of Tarzan (but he could speak the Chinese language), or Raymond’s character in Lofty Waters Verdant Bow. I felt sorry for Vincent’s character. The society does not accept him and he grew up by himself. He was pitiful, and I felt he had a good heart in him, even though he acted cold towards everyone. He lives alone in the woods, away from other people. He was misunderstood and people feared him because he was not “tamed”. Some of his past was showed as he remember the time he was with his master, and was learning some Taichi from him. But then his master eventually left him, just like his parents did. Did they abandon him, or did they die..?
Even though I believed Vincent was “good”, his heart was filled with hatred and always thought of revenge on the people who went against him.
Kenneth is the only one who was not scared of him (because he thought he wasn’t dangerous), and is the closest he can get of being friends with him. If I hadn’t seen trailers and the promotional image, I would have thought Kenneth was the main character in the story. Kenneth is an ordinary guy who lived at the country side with his mother and fiancee, played by Melissa. Kenneth treats Vincent as a friend and always tries to help him, but Vincent does not quite trust him. Kenneth always has dreams of being able to go into the city side, be adventurous and give new things a go because he doesn’t want to live an ordinary poor life, just like that. (He acts and looks like a young boy who is naive about the real world).
Melissa is also an orphan who was luckily taken in by Kenneth’s mother, thus Melissa is really grateful towards her and is very obedient and filial to her. Melissa really values family, and it appears that Kenneth and Melissa are engaged, as arranged by Kenneth’s mother. I think they act more like siblings who grew up together. I get the impression she is older than Kenneth so I’m that not convinced. I can’t really tell if there’s actually “love” between them, but some sort of feelings are there. Melissa is also scared of Vincent and does not like Kenneth having anything to do with him. There was one scene where Vincent carried Kenneth home because he injured his leg and when Vincent picked up Melissa’s cat, she called out “Don’t kill her!!“. (He was just playing with it)
I want to watch Taichi for Melissa and Vincent, I think they’ll be very cute together. This relationship reminds me of her character in The Crimson Sabre, where she falls in love with a man who she was initially afraid of.
The higher ranked people in society hated Vincent and often wanted him hunted down and dead. They eventually burned his home down, enraging him and he desired to seek revenge! His martial arts were quite good but it wasn’t enough against all those people and becomes badly injured. He takes one of the official’s (?) son as hostage and escapes. However, the hut he hid in was soon surrounded. Upon hearing that they plan to lure Vincent into releasing the man by offering fake deals and then killing him, Kenneth attempts to help Vincent by volunteering to be the guy to negotiate. When Melissa learns of the news of Kenneth’s danger, she pretends to bring food for Kenneth and Vincent to eat, so they let her through. It turns out Melissa had put in sleeping medicine in the food, “betraying” Vincent and Kenneth.
After Melissa convinced the two to eat, Melissa continued to speak:
“I used to be a orphan too. I used to be on the streets, enduring pain and hunger. So I’ve learned something, and that is, when there’s food to eat, then you must eat until you are fullest, because you wouldn’t know when there will be a next chance to eat. But I was very lucky, Mai Dai Ma (Kenneth’s mum) took me in and gave me a family. And this family is my everything. For my family, to protect my family, I would do whatever it takes and do anything…”
(I kept seeing her do that speech on trailers, but I didn’t expect it to be used so early in the series)
And so, Vincent gets captured but he eventually frees himself and again, badly injured. With the help of Kenneth, (and to some extent, Melissa) Kenneth manage to escape out of the country with Vincent. Upon hearing other men discuss about joining the army for a chance to become rich, Vincent and Kenneth decided to be a part of it. Kenneth had always wanted to explore the outside world and hoped that by helping to win the war, he could earn money for his family, while Vincent’s aim was to become a high ranked official to take revenge.
I personally found this part a bit odd, how could they join the army so quickly? They’re not even trained..
The group they were going against were led by Myolie’s father. Myolie acts very different to her usual roles and I felt she was really in character.
I felt really sorry for Myolie and her family…she eventually loses her father who was betrayed by one of his follower, her mother was shot to death, and then her baby brother was thrown onto the floor and killed before her eyes..
Myolie with her father who is the leaderÂ
Selena playing Myolie’s servant (she seems to get a lot of servant roles?)
Selena screams in tears as a soldier whacked Myolie’s baby brother off her arms..
Myolie’s character must be going insane ..
After the Myolie’s dad and mother were killed, the army were after Myolie and her baby brother and Myolie’s father’s loyal soldiers and Selena tried hard to protect them and help them escape. They were violently attacked and when Kenneth and Vincent saw that their “enemy” were weak girls, they couldn’t bare to watch what was happening and decided to save them instead…
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How are you finding Vincent? XD He’s good eh
I still can’t believe TVB had put this in the warehouse for so long!
I love how the theme was just instrumental. I think the theme without any lyrics does the series justice.
Anyways, I was surprise to find Vincent to be introduce in the series first as a wild person. Never saw that in the trailers. hmhp.
And another thing, who is the director of this series? Or does the producer actually do everything from editing, directing, and hell… even the director of art.
To j00ky : Yup, I quite like Vincent XD I like his character and acting =)
To anonomouse. :I was surprised the themesong was just instrumental lol I usually prefer a singing though, but as long as it has a subthemesong then I’m stil happy. The instrumental seems to suit the opening (like The Ultimate Crime Fighter).
I was surprised too! I didn’t see him like that in the trailers either.
I’m not sure who the director is (or for other TVB series). It might be in the ending credits of the series?
To anonomouse:
The producers of the series are: Tommy Leung Ka Shu & Choi Ching Sing (I wiki-ed it =P)
wow. I can see where you got the feeling that Tai Chi was a movie! Such a horrific thing to do to Myolie’s baby brother! Btw, is melissa younger than Kenneth in the series? Because she doesn’t look like it at all….
I started liking tai chi during the last 10 minutes of the 1st episode since that’s when it got exciting? what do you think got cut out since it went down to 25 episodes?
Sounds interesting ^^ Keep us updated =D
thanks