Fighting For Love

Siu Tong (Sammi Cheng) is a smart-mouthed, domineering lady with nary a kind word for others, driving her colleagues into cowering submission who meets her match in Tung Choi (Tony Leung). They encounter each other at a hilarious carpark accident and are at loggerheads from then on. Outwardly, Tung Choi appears to be a ruffian, talking the talk and walking the walk and even the ever ebullient Siu Tong is taken aback enough to enlist the aid of a cop to settle the dispute at a Karaoke lounge. The affair turns out to be more friendly than expected as he surprisingly coughs up for damages. Drunk, they end up having a one night stand with Siu Tong falling for Tung Choi. But things take a complicated turn as he is actually the wealthy heir to a popular beef brisket eatery (he tells her that their family wealth was enhanced by striking the Mark Six lottery pools twice!). He is also dating a popular TV starlet ($$ID=Niki Chow$$ looking very pretty) quite against his character - she makes him don bright pastel coloured outfits and Winnie The Pooh adornments, in place of the customary black T-shirt and jeans look he favours.

But bad times fall upon Siu Tong as she is made the scapegoat for a sour business deal and sacked - much to the glee of her colleagues. In typical HK hyperbole, she even manages to lose her father's pet dog on a nightly stroll. Unwanted, she works out (in a typically Chinese calculative manner) that it's cheaper to share her sister's hospital ward than check in at a hotel. Tung Choi sympathises with her and takes her home to his family mansion and his assortment of dysfunctional siblings - a dopey cross-eyed dog of an elder sister, an ecstasy addicted, demented younger sister, a sniveling wretch of a younger brother - all reputedly ruined by wealth, and a sensible matriach. They shun her at first but grow to accept her as Tung Choi finds himself falling in love. Siu Tong falls into place with his milieu, whipping the workers into shape at his eatery and provides a ear to his travails, even helping him reinvent the secret family recipe for the brisket stew that she inadvertently disposes. Soon Tung Choi finds himself caught between love for Siu Tong and obligation to his manipulative starlet fiancee who fights and schemes tooth and nail for him.

Both leads give convincing performances with little Tony Leung proving that he is as comfortable at formulaic HK fare as he is adept at arthouse material. Sammi Cheng is funny in what may be now a typical quirky persona for her (read "&&ID=V2673||Name=Needing You&&" and "&&ID=V3746||Name=Wu Yen&&"). Oh and the rest of the cast, Tung Choi's family and friends are delightful in this down-to-earth unpretentious romantic comedy that is more laughs and spit than polish.