Big Brother Film Review [大師兄] (2018) – Donnie As Teacher

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(This is Big Brother film review, which is a 2018 Hong Kong action drama film that has a premise where Donnie Yen acts as an ex-military man who becomes a teacher in a class full of problematic students)

This is perhaps one of those films where you would least expect Donnie Yen to be starred in as the main lead. With him already making his name internationally and locally with both Star Wars and Ip Man series respectively, one would never imagine him playing the role of a teacher. This film is directed by Kam Ka Wai, and is actually produced by Yen himself. In a way, this becomes his own passion project where he tries to play something different other than as a Kung Fu Master or as a blind man with the force. Without further ado, let’s delve into the Big Brother film review below to find out how it fares!

 

Premise

When a school that contains a class full of problematic students is about to be closed down and pave way for construction of housing projects, a teacher appears to register to teach that class. Henry Chen is actually an ex-military soldier who decides to teach his students the right course of life. Would he be able to succeed before it’s all too late?

Big Brother film review Donnie Yen as teacher
When Donnie Yen becomes a teacher, how successful would he be in a class full of problematic students?

 

Big Brother Film Review

Man! This film kind of hits a nostalgic note for me as it almost resembles the premise of GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka! In fact, 90% of the film is similar to it and others of a similar genre. Basically, a teacher who uses unconventional methods to instill moral lessons to his students and make them walk the right path. Sadly, the movie provides not many original ideas other than the school about to be bulldozered down.

Worse than GTO, the film skips much of the crucial parts that make such premise more interesting. It feels like the film decides to remove the scenes where Henry interacts with the students’ parents etc, as most of the time the parents/relatives of the students suddenly has a change of heart for no apparent reason other than to make the story flow. The interaction with the students is more interesting and in-depth, thankfully, though they remain predictable. Pacing wise, it’s fast and seems to be in a hurry, which is understandable when they try to cram a 20 volume of GTO manga into a 1.5-hour movie. It works in its favour, yet it also sacrifices many of the intimate/dramatic moments that could have been shown to make us empathise with the students/parents more.

The characters are, unfortunately, a bit of mixed bag. I like some of the diversity shown like there is a student who has a Philippine root and is the 2nd generation of his family in HK. It shows the common stereotype and also the problems that only the minorities face in HK, such as being caught/suspected for gambling or money laundering etc. Then we have the common students with family problems that are either of a single parent, cared by grandparents or not treated fairly due to genders. Most of them are decent, but also not as memorable. Henry Chen himself is pretty cool when action scenes are involved, and some of them are pretty legit sick! His way of teaching the students are equally interesting and I like how he interacts with many of the students. However, that’s it from the characters, where we don’t see much character growth that we would like to from the film. Lastly, the soundtrack is decent with a mix of some popular English pop songs and some Cantonese pop as well.

 

Big Brother Film Review [大師兄] (2018) – Donnie As Teacher
Story
Pacing
Characters
Soundtrack
Reader Rating0 Votes0
What's good
The cool action scenes
Interaction of the lead character with the students
Decent soundtracks
Diversity of the cast with some real issues faced by them in HK
What's bad
Premise is almost entirely predictable
Not an original premise
Weak antagonists
Film skips many crucial parts between Henry and the parents
3.5
Pretty Good!
A decent film with Donnie Yen Sensei!
As a sort of passion project, Donnie Yen does show that he is capable of playing different roles. However, the film is dragged down by unoriginal predictable premise together with a weak antagonist.
[Big Brother film review score table]

 

anthony l tj author bio

 

 

 

Author Details
An everyday guy who is the founder of Controller Companies. He started it when he was frustrated to find that the stuff he bought had no reviews available online. Thus, this website is created with the sole purpose of reviewing stuff that he has seen, bought, used or enjoyed! Now, he is probably doing another review while you are reading this.
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An everyday guy who is the founder of Controller Companies. He started it when he was frustrated to find that the stuff he bought had no reviews available online. Thus, this website is created with the sole purpose of reviewing stuff that he has seen, bought, used or enjoyed! Now, he is probably doing another review while you are reading this.
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