Big Brother

IT’S August, summer blockbuster season is winding down, and the more sombre efforts of “awards season” are about to be unleashed. This feel-good classroom drama that kicks from the hip and aims for the heart is a good way to bridge the two.

More Blackboard Jungle than Kung Fu Jungle but never as mean-spirited as either of those two, it stars Donnie Yen as Chen Xia, who has no teaching experience but somehow lands a job at an underfunded Hong Kong secondary school. There, he reaches both difficult students and disenchanted teachers with his serene, practical and knowledge-driven approach to tough problems. Director Kam Ka-Wai (Color Of The Game) keeps us interested in Chen’s struggles while leaving the newbie teacher’s past a suitably intriguing enigma until late in the film, and the payoff works.

It wouldn’t be a Donnie Yen film without a good deal of butt-kicking, of course. The excuses – pardon, reasons for the action scenes have to do with one of Chen’s students who gets mixed up with gangsters, who in turn have their own reasons for seeing the school closed down. While some of the kids’ troubles are resolved in a rather simplistic way, Big Brother still manages to get in some biting commentary on the HK education system and the plight of marginalised youngsters. Most of all, it works because – like Chen – the movie never gives up on any of its characters, not even those who seem the most irredeemable. – Davin Arul