| Brother of Darkness (1994) |
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| Director: | Billy Tang |
| Writers: | Kong Heung Sang |
| Starring: | Hugo Ng, Lily Chung, William Ho, Money Lo, and Anthony Wong |
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The Plot: Our film begins with Wong Kuen To (Hugo Ng), a mild mannered young man who enjoys a little recreational Taekwondo, being arrested for the apparent killing of his own brother. We then watch as this young man goes to court for the homicide, and then the court proceedings give us the real story of what happened to this man and what would cause him to do this horrible thing. As it turns out, Wong Kuen To was actually an adopted child. After their first born boy turned out to be such a tremendous burden, Wong Kuen To’s parents decided to try again in their elderly years. Unfortunately, the eldest son never learned to leave the nest. During the few moments where he is not in some segment of the correctional system, this older brother beats, harasses, robs, and denigrates both his parents as well as Wong Kuen To. As Kuen To tries to deal with the sexual abnormality that his older brother has left him with with (he has a condition called hypgonadism, developed after a concentrated knee to his testicles as a young boy), he must also learn how to make a relationship work with his beautiful girlfriend Jenny. However, this older brother from hell will hardly sit back and allow anyone in his family to have any sort of peace. |
| The Review |
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There’s an underlying current in the movie that looks to examine the effects of psychological abuse, using our leading man as an example. Despite being a young man who is full of bravado, our leading man is shown as being very reluctant to engage in a physical confrontation with his insane older brother. Despite having trained in taekwondo for the sole purpose of protecting himself, he refuses to step up when necessary. It ultimately takes being pushed to the point of seeing someone he loves being bullied before he actually decides to step up. While watching the film, the audience might first believe that this mental abuse is also the reason why our hero refuses to lose his virginity to his beautiful girlfriend. Although she presses him for sex, he continually backs out of it. As it turns out, the physical abuse, the aforementioned knee to the groin from the plot synopsis, has given him a disorder known as hypogonadism, which is a legitimate disorder that stops the use of sexual organs in males and females. In every way, our character has been emasculated, and as we know and wait for him to have some form of revenge, the audience can only really cry alongside him for most of the film’s duration.
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| The Conclusion |
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