Born To Be King (Taiwan version) DVD Region All

There have been two elections for president of Taiwan. The first elected a conservative KMT candidate during a security crisis, but the second was in 2000, and Y&D does it up, but good. The KMT manipulates election results and no one expected KMT candidate Lien Chan to have much trouble defeating Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate, Chen Shui-bian, and his running mate, Lu Hsiu-lien, a feminist who spent five years in prison for giving a speech criticizing the KMT. But there were scandals, problems, allegations of fraud, and in the end the anti-crime DPP ticket emerged victorious. The first non-KMT government in modern Taiwanese history.

Left out in the cold, the triads panic. Should they ally with the government by publicly going straight or should they just stick it out and wait for the corruption to set in? Jordan Chan is in the middle of powerplays and Machiavellian maneuvers as the Sun Luen gang tries to figure out its future. Surprisingly, the saner section of Sun Luen is the more cynical one that expects business as usual to proceed after a brief period of adjustment. Members of the gangs are played by arthouse darlings and Hou Hsiao-hsien regulars Jack Gao (Full Alert, Goodbye South Goodbye) and Chen Sung-yung (Prison on Fire II, City of Sadness).

Despite getting a bit slow in the middle, there's an eerily boring quality to the Sun Luen scenes that seems to mirror life. Something important is going on but it's so boring you can't focus past the droning voices and concentrate on the meaning behind them. Chicken (Jordan Chan) brings his Hung Hing boys over to Taiwan to help straighten out the mess and while the movie will mean more to those who understand the politics, there're plenty of Y&D antics to please the fans. While street fights have been replaced by boardroom talks, there are one or two gangwar setpieces, and while age is taking its toll on the Hung Hing boys, they still look good, and that's what counts.

by Grady Hendrix