Film Review: The Moon Thieves 盜月者 (2024) Hong Kong 🇭🇰
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia 🇦🇺)
Following the reins of Hollywood’s “Ocean’s Eleven” and Hong Kong’s “Once a Thief”, the crime heist genre is rarely explored to in Hong Kong cinema. Director Steve Yuen in “The Moon Thieves” managed to recreate the heist starring the popular Mirror boy band namely Edan Liu, Anson Lo and Keung To and well supported by the always versatile Louis Cheung and the flexible Michael Ning. The problem with this film is not so much its acting, but the premise is only really when the heist is going on.
Edan Lui and Anson Lo continues to impresses with their acting career by shining in their respective role, but one cannot forgive the criminally miscasting of Keung To as the main villain. Keung To is unfortunately far too likeable to be menacing and as the key villain, there is almost nothing to hate or be scared about. Louis Cheung is always wonderful and provides the rock performance of the quartet. Michael Ning is suitably natural in another good performance.
All in all, “The Moon Thieves” is fairly entertaining whenever the heist is going on as the tension is well built and sustained. However, the film weak points remains the clear miscasting of Keung To and the padded up background story of triads involved. The film would have worked out better if the focus on mainly on the heists and the planning of it, thus allowing the characters to shine more. Probably the weakest Chinese Lunar New Year from of the trio of local offerings.
I rated it 7/10