Main cast: Michelle Yeoh (Pak Yin Fei), Brendon Chan (Pak Yeuk Tong), Ben Chaplin (Eric), and Richard Roxburgh (Karl)
Director: Peter Pau

While I’m glad that Michelle Yeoh is doing her thing and doing it well, The Touch is a flashy but substance-free action adventure movie, just think Lara Croft doing somersaults and split kicks.

And there’s something about a Chinese-produced movie passing Chinese people as circus performers that makes me feel vaguely uneasy. It seems like shameless exploitation. From a Hollywood studio, I can take it as another silly stereotyping of Chinese people. But from Peter Pau and Michelle Yeoh? I don’t like it all.

Michelle Yeoh plays Yin Fei, a super circus acrobat who has to find some silly mysterious relic before the villain gets it first. Cue the autopilot action thingies as Yan Fei leaps over crumbling cliffs, delivers flying kicks left and right, and pretends to be in love with Eric, the obligatory good ang moh (white guy in local Chinese dialect), while Richard Roxburgh is embarrassing as the evil ang moh. Ms Yeoh and Mr Chaplin have no chemistry whatsoever, but then again, Ben Chaplin has never displayed any convincing chemistry with anybody in all the movies I’ve seen him in. He just stands there and stares in that bulgy-eyed way of his, and he speaks his lines as if he’s a more constipated Nigel from Relic Hunter.

Throw in lots of “Asian” mumbo-jumbo about fate, destiny, and honor, and The Touch is exciting, cheesy, and cringe-inducing all at once. Michelle Yeoh can kick ass like nobody’s business, but I wish she will do something meatier in the future. This one is too easy and unworthy of her.