What a great thriller can do to audience is to stimulate their mood, giving audience heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, anticipation, and anxiety.
However, it’s not enough! Today, a great thriller and all genres of movie in general need to able to maintain its “charm” not only on the edge of audience seats when they’re watching it, but also until the film hit the credit title. This is indispensable to make audience willing to experience it again, or at least tell their friends to watch it.
“Ms J Contemplates Her Choice” is a Singaporean thriller movie that’s very convincing at the beginning but turn out a bit lame at the end. We enjoy the story about a radio announcer, Jo Young (Ms J) who provide callers with advice about choices they need to take. Sometime it’s as shallow as leaving or loving a man, or another mundane topics in life.
But one night, a caller pushed Ms J to choose between a prostitute and a loan shark. Not too concerned about it, Ms J chose the prostitute, and the caller said she saved one life over another.
Only after they found a body of a famous loan shark, things getting intense. Ms J felt something wasn’t right, but her producer insisted to continue the show.
In the mean time, we saw a subplot of a young couple that incidentally hit a man in the street. The girl suggested that they can runaway because the guy they hit might be just an illegal migrant. But, the boy in doubt, should they call a police officer and file an incident? In the end, it was the boy who grinded the guy body, to make sure he was dead.
And then there were scenes where we can see the silence moments of Ms J. These are precisely strength of this movie, but it’s not that much. Pop singer Kit Chan in her debut was able to portray the character so well but the story did not give her enough space to blow audience’s mind.
At the end, Ms J decided to resign from the radio station, and the caller get her phone number, calling, which one you choose between the most unexpected things in her life. She was facing the ultimate moral dilemma only to be solved so easily.
Admittedly, this film has successfully present Singapore and Singaporean from its heart of the darkness. We will see characters battled with values, and some remain unsolved until the end of the movie. Meanwhile, audience will find its cinematography was really alluring.
What’s lacking in this movie seems to be its ability to maintain its charm after the plot revealed its twist. We were not satisfied with the ending, because forgiveness was not always easy, especially for those enduring years of grudge.
"Ms J Contemplates Her Choice"
Director: Jason Lai
Country: Singapore (2014)
My rating: 3/5
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