The Drummer

After a Hong Kong gangster's son tangles with a rival's moll, he winds up discovering a new way of life as a Zen drummer in this second feature from writer-director Kenneth Bi. At the center of the story is Sid (Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie), a rock band drummer whose father, Kwan (Tony Leung Ka Fai), is a gangland leader. When crime boss Stephen Ma (Kenneth Tsang) catches Sid with his mistress, Carmen (Yumiko Cheng), he demands Sid's hands on a platter; but the father instead dispatches the youth to rural Taiwan to live with his Uncle Chiu (Roy Cheung). A reverberating sound coming from the mountains leads the pair to a leafy plateau, where they find a group of Zen drummers who so fascinate Sid that he asks to join them. To their surprise, leader Lan Jie (Liu Ruo-Yu, director of Taiwan's U Theatre) welcomes the insolent hothead into the peaceful community, but from the start, Sid clashes with the headstrong Hong Duo (Angelica Lee), whom he finds attractive, although he dutifully keeps up with martial arts exercises and performs menial tasks in order to develop patience and humility. Still, after two weeks, Sid gives up and rejoins Chiu, but he continues to check in on the drummers. Although it's obvious that Sid will transform into a better person through his involvement with the troupe, Bi provides enough twists and turns to help offset the predictability of the premise. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)