Chinatown (2022)

Drama is pretty good, but did not feel original..

As I really loved A Fist Within Four Walls, I decided to check this drama out as by the posters and trailers, it looks to be a different adaptation with the same period martial arts piece attached. However, when I watched the drama, first episode did not intrigue me to watch the second episode, nor the third as the story felt the exact same. Main characters' fathers get killed, one father was accused of killing the other. In the end, it was revealed that a mastermind was behind killing them. It all got boring too fast. Even with that exact same formula, I got back to watching it again after the fourth episode when I saw a clip online of the fight scene. The fights are an improvement from AFWFW, although it was only good for the first few episodes. The final climax fight scene never lived up to expectations with close camera shots, which made it feel uncomfortable to watch, unlike AFWFW with cool wide angled shots, along with the high quality slow motion shots, which in this drama they never used which was a bummer. But as time passes, camera quality improved greatly, but it would've been nice to get the slow-mo cams again.

Just like AFWFW, even more characters die in this drama. Even Ruco's character dies at the end of the drama who suffered from heart problems as he was too focused on finding his love interest Natalie Tong who disappeared after the final fight with the mastermind, who was Carlos Chan's character, father of Natalie and Grace Chan's characters, who was asked by him to pose as Ruco's long lost sister. The chemistry between Natalie Tong and Ruco Chan didn't feel natural, there were barely any emotional scenes between them like Ruco and Nancy's characters from AFWFW, but Joel Chan and Elene Yiu's chemistry was pretty good for the most part. Philip Ng's character went from a Bruce Lee badass from AFWFW, to a dumb but pure innocent minded character in this drama. His character still fights well though, so he's still a badass in this drama and thankfully he didn't die in the end as his character was too cute! That can't be said for Yuen Qiu's character as she plays Ruco's mom who barely have any fight scenes. Like come on! This is one of her last TVB dramas and you can't even give her a proper departure! Thankfully the emotional scenes, especially her goodbye to Ruco when she found out about his heart condition and forces him to leave her and find Natalie was really effective and made it a huge tear jerker when he read the letter given by her.

And then we have the two baddies of the drama, Jimmy Au and Cheung Kwok Keung's characters, who dies too fast in the drama! We barely get to see Jimmy Au fight in the drama, as we've seen how capable he is in AFWFW, and Cheung Kwok Keung could've gotten more action scenes as well. They got rid of both to save room for the big baddie of the drama, Carlos Chan, who was the killer of Ruco and Joel's dads as he had used an acupuncture to manipulate Ruco's dad into thinking Joel's dad is the bad guy they were fighting, resulting in their deaths, just so he could take over the streets, which his plan failed as Jimmy and Kwok Keung ambushed him so that Tong Yan Street can be theirs instead.

The OST in this drama was pretty good. It was one of the first dramas Ruco get to sing again after he sang the theme for Succession War in 2018, and didn't even get a chance to sing the theme for his 2021 drama, Sinister Beings, so it was nice they let him sing in this drama as I like his voice. Even if the drama was actually supposed to release in 2020 but got delayed to make room for a different drama, Go! Go! Go! Operation C9. Ending OST by Hana Kuk was also good as usual as her voice is one of the best in the industry.

Overall, if you're looking for good fight scenes again, this drama is your go to. But if you're watching this for the story, do NOT watch AFWFW then watch this as it will ruin the experience for you. I'm guessing this is more for the ones who hasn't seen AFWFW, but they should've treated it better with including new stuff for the story for the long time TVB fans like me.

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