Cyborg She

By Chen Nan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-01 10:09

South Korean director Kwak Jae-yong follows up on his previous successes My Sassy Girl and Windstruck with an entertaining new sci-fi fantasy.

Cyborg She is a genre-bending love story about a cyber girl from the future (Ayase Haruka) and her inventor boyfriend Kitamura Jiro (Koide Keisuke).

In the year 2070, the kindly, fragile and physically handicapped Jiro builds a female cyborg to assist him in his daily life. Equipped with a time-travel device, Jiro sends the girl back to 2007 in an attempt to prevent the incident that crippled him. Fulfilling her duty, she meets up with the younger Jiro and saves him from the accident.

Just as the two begin to fall in love, a massive earthquake hits Tokyo. The cyborg does her best to save Jiro, but suffers serious damage in the process - and Jiro is left to try and save her before it's too late.

Impressive visual effects and humorous interludes make the film an interesting watch, particularly with the special effects used for the cyborg and the scenes depicting Tokyo's destruction.

Meanwhile, two martial arts comedies open this weekend. Tracing Shadow, directed by and starring Hong Kong veteran Francis Ng, is set in Beijing at the end of the Ming Dynasty, when martial arts masters flock to the city in search of a legendary treasure map.

On His Majesty's Secret Service, another comedy, is directed by Hong Kong director Wong Jing. For generations, the secret service has been responsible for protecting the emperor. Of the dozen duty-bound agents, Zero Zero Dog (Louis Koo) is considered the weakest link. He shows no interest in martial arts and spends his time studying technology and drawing up scientific inventions. But when Dog discovers that the chief eunuch, Cao Yan Chui (Fan Siu Wong), plans to assassinate the emperor, he decides to eliminate the enemy by taking matters into his own hands.