Divergence (2006) | DVD Review

Most Asian crime thrillers, including the ouevre of director and frequent Jackie Chan collaborator Benny Chan (Heroic Duo, Gen-X Cops), are chock full of action and martial arts sequences and not much else. With Divergence, though, the director has tried to up the ante with plenty of drama and character development, with varying degrees of success.

Ostensibly the story of three men with very different careers and how each of them arrive at a crossroads that ends up affecting the other two, Divergence begins with down-on-his-luck cop Suen (Aaron Kwok, Storm Riders) extraditing a witness from Canada to testify in court in a money-laundering case. Very quickly, the witness is assassinated and we are thrust into a very confusing plot about a crooked businessman named Yiu (Gallen Lo) with a kidnapped pop star son, his lawyer To (Ekin Cheng, Heroic Duo) who happens to be married to a woman (Angelica Lee, Koma) who looks exactly like Suen’s fiancee who disappeared ten years ago, and Coke (Daniel Wu, One Night in Mongkok), an assassin who seems to have information that Suen would kill for.
It’s not uncommon in this type of film for the story to be rather convoluted with many characters and subplots, but the difference here is that we are supposed to care about it as opposed to just putting up with it for the sake of getting to the next ultra-intense action scene. The fact that the script was written by Ivy Ho, who usually does romance films, proves this point. And truth be told, you really do end up caring about and rooting for many of the characters, Suen most of all. Kwok’s intensity and emotional angst as Suen is certainly deserving of the Golden Horse Award (Hong Kong’s Oscars) he won as best actor.

Despite the concerted affort at drama and characterization, it’s still the action sequences that drive the film and give it its intensity. Indeed, Divergence also won Golden Horses for its lush cinematography and excellent editing and was nominated for its original score, which is actually quite muted and heartbreaking, given the subject matter of the film. Chan proves to be adept at melding the many different elements of the plot into a semi-coherent whole, but therein lies the problem with Divergence: there’s far too much going on in it to make sense of. You come away from the film knowing everything that happened but you feel like there’s something missing, something that you didn’t quite grasp that would make everything click into place if you had.

The chemistry between Wu and Kwok is very good, and the two have a great time playing cat and mouse, often leaving the viewer wondering who the cat is and who the mouse is. The brilliant chase and fight scene between them about halfway through Divergence is the best action sequence of the film – the choreography is so convincing that it almost looks real. But the crown jewel of Divergence is a scene in which Suen has a mental breakdown while in his car. Kwok’s face goes through about twelve different emotions in the span of a few moments, and you can almost feel his pain at having lost the love of his life and having nothing left to divert his attention from that loss.

The cinematography of Divergence is gorgeous and transfers beautifully to disc, and the sound is excellent in 5.1 Dolby Digital and even better in 5.1 DTS. The film’s dialogue is in Cantonese and Mandarin, and the main problem I had with the movie was that the subtitles were always a couple of seconds behind, making the confusing plot that much more difficult to follow.
The DVD package is a ‘special two disc set’, but everything could easily have fit onto one disc. The feature commentary from Chan is all in Chinese but there are English subtitles throughout, making for a lot of reading if you are trying to follow the commentary and the film at the same time. It consists mostly of detailing the technical aspects of the film and various plot devices and includes brief appearances from members of the cast talking about what it was like shooting certain scenes. Also included are two trailers, a photo gallery, previews of other Tartan Asia Extreme new releases, a short feature on the Gala Premiere of Divergence, and a 15-minute ‘making of’, featuring interviews with the main cast members, the director, and the screenwriter. Pretty standard stuff if you ask me; nothing ‘special’ there.

Tartan Video’s Asia Extreme division prides itself on releasing Asia’s most extreme films, from supernatural thrillers to quirky melodramas to blood-drenched crime films. While Divergence is unquestionably an Asian film, it’s not very extreme. That being said, it is a semi-compelling action/drama that has its moments, as long as you can keep from getting too confused by the plot.

Movie rating – 2.5

Disc Rating – 2