Fing's Raver (2001)

If you don't know what a "Fing pill" is yet, Fing's Raver will fill the vocabulary gap. Viewers can be excused not catching the lingo -- the term is in part the subtitlers' creation. Anglicising the Canto-slang word fing (a swinging body movement that's usually at the head), it's a nifty catch-all term for party pill Ecstasy and its ilk, or feng tau yuen in Cantonese.

Should young Hongkongers need a reminder that these Fing pills are not harmless party poppers, Fing's Raver presumably hopes to step in and tell of their skull-trashing evils. Before the film's Mongkok dance parties and police raids begin, Fing's Raver gives a little background. A rundown on the many Fing pill variants is given against a black screen before we see them take full effect on a hapless clubgoer. And then the story begins.

One hotbed for drug abuse is a nightspot run by Bill Ng and his partners, who've just switched the place over from an old-school hostess joint. Ng's not allowing drugs in the club -- he wants kids swinging heads to music, not pills. But the club's first night is inauspicious when drug-charged hostess CoCo aces out on the dance floor.

Despite Ng's directive, drug deals are indeed going down at his club. Partners Ben and Charlie are busy cornering the entire Hong Kong market for Fing pills, and they have a lad named Wo (Samuel Leung) working the floor to sell their tablets. In the meantime, the local cops are stepping up their anti-drug action. They've just discovered that Fing pills make holes in abusers' skulls and they're keen to root out the problem in their division. Intelligence staffer Dinny Lee (Loretta Lee) is drafted to help raid Ng's clubs, where they think the biggest problems seem to be.

Mishmash plotting brings in a family for Wo -- brother Sam (Sam Lee) and a mother (Maria Cordero) -- and a group of former hostesses to all reinforce the drug peril. But for all Fing's Raver's anti-drug messages the production is limp throughout and hardly compelling viewing. Too little screen time is given to far too many characters, with Loretta Lee and Sam Lee accomplishing little of note and Sophie Ngan wasted in a minor side role. Ha Ping and two other ladies also join Cordero in a credibility-busting disco scene that just wastes time. Ultimately, the film's focus generally sticks to Samuel Leung and those around him in what becomes a routine crime flick, albeit with a message. Fing's Raver's sole interesting moment sees the police put under surveillance by Ng's heavies -- a concept similar to the media tailing a judge a couple of years earlier. Amusing for a while, but hardly enough return for the ticket price.

Image: The printed billboard at Mongkok's South China Theatre.

Credits:

Directed by Sherman Wong
Starring Samuel Leung Cheuk-moon, Loretta Lee Lai-chun, Sam Lee Chan-sam, Maria Cordero, Sophie Ngan and Ha Ping