Weekend in Taipei (2024)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Taiwan Ease

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Another slick B-movie from Luc Besson's action factory, George Huang's Weekend in Taipei is all surface and no surprises, but it's lean and crisp and has a pleasant lightness that makes it appealing in the moment.

John Lawlor (Luke Evans) is an undercover DEA agent. After a drug bust goes sideways, his superior (Pernell Walker) sends him on vacation. He uses the opportunity to go to Taipei, in hopes of digging up some evidence on wealthy businessman Kwang (Sung Kang), whom he knows is an international drug dealer. Kwang is married to Joey (Gwei Lun-Mei), who is clearly unhappy with the arrangement, but stays so she can care for her 13-year-old Raymond (Wyatt Yang).

Raymond hates his stepfather Kwang, especially because Kwang's fishing business — a cover for the drug-smuggling operation — is responsible for killing dolphins. So, just in time for John's arrival, Raymond steals an important ledger with secrets of Kwang's business practices. Unbeknownst to any of them, John and Joey have a shared history and, as their paths cross, sparks are about to fly.

We haven't heard much from Weekend in Taipei director Huang in the 30 years since his debut Swimming with Sharks (1994); Huang wrote this screenplay with Besson, and Besson is very good at this kind of thing. The movie has a lot of fun with its flashback structure, slowly revealing the events of 15 years earlier that led all the characters to this place. (All three of the major characters have long, floppy hair in the flashbacks.) They're playful and rhythmic, designed to dole out information in increments.

Otherwise, there are fights and shootouts and several nifty car chases. In one scene, Evans chases an escaping vehicle on foot, launches himself into a flying kick, crashes through the passenger window, thwacks the driver in the face, and knocks him out the driver-side door. When we first meet Joey, she's introduced — for some reason — like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, wearing dark glasses, a little black dress, and pearls, while "Moon River" twitters away on the soundtrack. She's said to be an expert mechanic and driver, and in one scene she takes a gorgeous red Ferrari Spider out for a high-speed test drive.

Sung Kang (best known as "Han" in the Fast & Furious movies) plays the arrogant villain with a haughty streak of white in his hair, and he's a man you love to hate. Things climax with a showdown fight in front of a movie screen playing Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers (an older couple in the theater comments upon the "real-life" violence), and it looks spectacular; Weekend in Taipei may not be as good as that movie, but it might be just a teensy bit more fun.