The gangster genre has been a staple of cinema for as long as I can remember, and filmmakers continue to find new ways of exploring society’s fascination over a life of glamorized crime. Chen Mei-Juin aims to do just that with The Gangster’s Daughter by shedding light on paternal dynamics within the gangster world. Although it’s certainly not uncharted territory, the final product is enjoyable and novel enough to serve as a worthy contribution to the genre.
The Gangster’s Daughter revolves around an aging gangster Keigo (Jack Kao), who reunites with his estranged daughter Shaowu (Ally Chiu) after the passing of his ex-wife. Due to circumstances at school, Shaowu moves to Taipei to live with a father she never knew, leaving the rural Kinmen Islands for the very first time. Keigo, on the other hand, is tasked with being a father to a teenage girl.
As the title suggests, a life of crime plays a major role in this amalgamation of two worlds. Over the course of the film, we’re introduced to Keigo’s love interest and criminal associates, giving reason to his worldview of not getting involved in drugs and striving for an eventual exit strategy. Meanwhile, friction grows between Keigo and Shaowu as the latter’s curiosity in her father’s business practices grow, anchoring the film’s primary story arc.
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In the lead role, Jack Kao’s subdued performance of an aging crime boss is perfect, as usual. You get the sense that Keigo has always been kind at heart, and under different circumstances, would have revelled in a completely different way of life. His rookie father figure sentiment bounces off nicely with Ally Chiu’s portrayal of a stubborn teenager with a naive sense of curiosity. The relationship between Shaowu and her grandmother is also incredibly rich and more screen time shared between the two of them would have been welcome.
The Gangster’s Daughter contains all the usual tropes of a gangster film, including what one would expect from a story circling the relationship between a father and his teenage daughter, but it’s far from a typical gangster film. However, that doesn’t always work in its favour — the film’s indecisiveness in committing to a direction being its most glaring flaw.
Given its premise and overall setup, the film could have easily steered towards over-the-top theatrics, tender melodrama, or intense realism. Chen never reaches either end of the spectrum, and instead chooses to float in this tepid middle ground that’s too tame for its own good. Scenes between Keigo and his underlings feel like they could be in an offbeat comedy, whereas scenes with Shaowu fluctuate between coming-of-age teen drama and lighthearted family affair. Some movies benefit from this type of genre bouncing, but for a story that has such a clear underlying story arc, it unfortunately doesn’t.
The film has great elements that work well on their own, but when taken together as a whole, there’s not enough to create the type of emotional narrative needed to carry it past the finish line. In fact, when the story elevates to its climatic finale during the last 20 minutes of the film, the result just doesn’t carry much dramatic weight. The film still works, though, but could have been much better given all its many merits in isolation. The Gangster’s Daughter still injects some originality into the gangster genre, and offers a welcome change to see filmmakers explore this story from a different lens. The execution may not have been perfect, but the ride is still a worthwhile endeavour for fans of the genre.
This review was first posted at VCinema on July 5, 2017 as part of coverage for the 2017 New York Asian Film Festival 2017. This review has been edited and reposted with their permission.
