Claudio Carvalho In Hong Kong, Dr. Gao Jing (Lee Sinje) is introduced to the brother of her best girlfriend Chen Xiao Kai (Isabella Leong), the photographer and diver Dave Chen Guo Dong (Guo Xiao Dong). They fall in love for each other and Guo Dong invites Gao Jing to travel to Taiwan to visit an ancient submarine city, where he intends to propose her. During the dive, Guo Dong vanishes and his headless body is found later while Gao Jing cannot recall what happened underwater. She decides to investigate and a bleak mystery is disclosed."Sam Hoi Tsam Yan" is a messy, boring and melodramatic never-ending ghost story. The screenplay is awful, with many ridiculous twists where nothing is what seems to be. This movie is so terrible that gives the sensation that will never end. The only good point is the wonderful cinematography. The absurd plot in IMDb is totally wrong. My vote is two.Title (Brazil): "Mergulho Fatal" ("Fatal Dive")

dbborroughs Woman is left to pick up the pieces after her photographer boyfriend goes missing and is discovered dead on a working vacation that was to be the time he proposed to her.There are questions as to whether the body is his and she begins to try and unravel what had happened to her boyfriend.Strange and pretty much a mess of a film bounces through time and space as the woman begins to have visions and relive past events. I think. Frankly I'm not sure what the hell was going on.Certainly the events make for some great looking images, but the plot is not really clear. I kind of lost interest about half way in and just kind of went with it hoping for an "ah ha" moment that would make it all make sense and make me want to back it up and try again. It never happened. I know many people who dislike the film are calling it further proof of the directorial ability of Tsui Hark. I'm not so sure partly because some of the sequences work beautifully, but more because Hark has never been a great director. To be certain he's directed some great, or near great films (Peking Opera Blues, We're going to Eat You, Butterfly Murders), but for the most part he is a better producer than a director (He produced John Woo's Better Tomorrow films and Bullet in the Head, The Chinese Ghost Story films among others). I don't think he's declined as a director. I just think he picked a poor script.

ebossert Angelica Lee and Isabella Leong investigate the enigmatic death of a loved one at sea in this film by Tsui Hark. The visuals and camera-work are excellent, with some cool sequences filmed underwater. (Seriously, the cinematography is exceptional.) The ghouls are very unusual and are "touched up" with some CGI. The storyline is very engaging, with multiple elements introduced to keep the viewer off balance. Some have criticized the film for being schizophrenic, but this method of storytelling is actually effective, interesting, and adds some unpredictability. The romantic elements are on the cheesy side, but this film simply does not deserve the abuse it has taken from online reviewers. It maintains interest from start to finish; and sometimes that's good enough.I normally wouldn't bother writing a review for a film I rate a 6/10, but the sheer level of abuse this film has received from IMDb reviewers is surprising. "Missing" is so unpretentious and harmless that I question how someone in their right mind could hate the film to the degree of giving it a 1/10 rating. Then again, these are the same people who gave Jet Li's pretentious, over-dramatic fluff piece "The Warlords" (2007) a 10/10 (as well as Woo's pathetic "Red Cliff") – so maybe I'm expecting a little too much individuality when dealing with the bandwagon jumpers that infest IMDb. In all honesty, I find that the average ratings on this website have become almost completely useless.After calling "Missing" a complete mess, one reviewer claimed that only those who liked "Diary" (2006) could buy into this movie. This was an obvious attempt to indirectly trash both films by drawing a parallel between two "convoluted" story lines with "copout" endings. One can only assume that this guy has no idea what he's talking about. "Diary" is a masterpiece of horror cinema that is on a level far higher than that of "Missing." The twists and turns in "Diary" are well-executed with little in terms of ambiguity; almost every single event is adequately explained. "Missing", on the other hand, includes a twist that tosses a good portion of the film into subjective interpretation. I say this in defense of "Diary" so that readers understand that the comparison is completely unwarranted and misguided.I do find it ironic that overpraised directors like David Lynch can operate within a universe where virtually everything is tossed up to subjective interpretation, yet receive heaping amounts of praise for being original and innovative. How is this any different from what Tsui Hark does in "Missing"? Sure, the big twist that's revealed during the latter third of the film basically forces the viewer to interpret the preceding events in a symbolic light, but some of it does have very specific psychological meaning. That still leaves the final third of the film to operate within objective reality, which is far more than what Lynch provided in the abhorrent "Eraserhead." So what's the problem? "Missing" is not nearly as weird as "Eraserhead", but it sure makes a LOT more sense, yet it somehow is excluded from receiving credit for using ambiguity to provoke thought and introduce originality. I'm not understanding this double standard.Now, I'm not saying that "Missing" is a great film. It's got some healthy doses of cheesiness and some of the events that take place during the opening hour may not hold up well after a second viewing, but there is a constant aura of interest that is maintained from start to finish – which is more than one can say for the seemingly endless barrage of carbon-copy Chinese historical epics like "The Warlords" and "Three Kingdoms" that quite frankly have NO originality, NO enjoyability, NO artistic integrity, and NO purpose for existing other than to ape Hollywood with soulless garbage masked behind a veil of massive budgets.I'll take a film like "Missing" over those pathetic projects any day of the week. I may not recommend a blind buy, but a rental with reasonable expectations is not something to run away from.

la_resistance28 I thought maybe the IMDb score of "5" was a mistake. And I was correct. "5" is much too generous a score for such an absolute waste of my time. The plot focuses on a female psychiatrist whose undersea photographer boyfriend mysteriously died during a recent dive, and she has to deal with the aftermath of his strange death. There are far too many plot holes, cheap scares, and suspensions of disbelief to allow you to even tolerate the movie. When you're not rolling your eyes or checking your watch, you'll probably be tearing your hair out at the ridiculousness of it all. For example, *SPOILER ALERT* a good third of the movie takes place inside the head of one of the crazy characters, and when the director reveals that it as "it was all just a dream"... well, you realize you're not getting any of that part of your life back. I give it one star for some decently-shot underwater scenes and pretty fish. But then again, I can get that sort of stuff as part of my screen-saver already, so why bother? Please STAY AWAY from this awful, awful excuse for a movie.