So Close

I’m always hesitant about genre-blending movies; the dramedy, the horror comedy and in this case, the action comedy. I’m reminded of that quote, “never half-ass two things, full-ass one thing.” Most genre-blending movies, including today’s movie So Close fall into the first category of half-assing two things.

 So Close is an action comedy that is not particularly funny and features unmemorable, unremarkable action scenes. The movie follows two criminal sisters and the female cop who is assigned to track them down. By the end of the movie, one of the sisters has to start working with the female cop and has also developed an attraction towards her.

The WLW content in So Close is so minimal. The queer content is such that if it needed to be cut for censorship, the movie wouldn’t lack. I understand the necessity of this. So Close was made in Hong Kong and cinema in that region doesn’t always love big screen, queer representation. But damn, the only reason I was watching this movie was for queer content. So Close’s WLW content is limited to the last half-hour of the film and most of it is more subtext than anything. There’s certainly more hetero content in this film than WLW content. There is a single lesbian kiss and that kiss is the only reason I’m reviewing this film. Without that brief touch of lips, this movie would not be near gay enough to meet the standards I require for a film to be reviewed on this site.

Even in aspects other than the queer front, So Close failed to please me. So Close is riddled with cliche plots and stock characters. It’s not particularly funny so as a comedy it fails. The action scenes also failed to impress me. The fight choreography is certainly fine but the amount of slow motion and other obnoxious editing techniques don’t elevate the fight scenes, they disrupt them. Cliche as this movie is, So Close hits all the reasons why the 2000s were a bad decade for action movie. The only original thought in the thing is making one of the leads queer and as previously stated, that was pretty minimal.

So Close was really disappointing. I really wanted to like this movie because I like WLW films that are genre films. Queer action movies in particular are super rare. But So Close just wouldn’t let me like it. At every turn I was thwarted by bland characters and cliched plot. On top of this, the queer content is seriously minimal. My overall feelings towards So Close is that I’m aggressively dispassionate about it. Usually WLW films I don’t like garner anger or at least sadness. So Close just left me with a complete absence of emotion of any kind.

Overall rating: 4.9/10

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