Monday, January 25, 2021

Something Good - Luca Barbareschi (2013) - Nam Sang Wai, Yuen Long

Our next film, Something Good, is an Italian production shot with English dialogue and filmed mainly in Hong Kong. Also known as The Mercury Conspiracy and The Mercury Factor, it stars Luca Barbareschi (who also directed) as Matteo, a sort of middleman dealing in the world of tainted food sales. The story appears to have been partly inspired by the melamine milk scandal that rocked Mainland China a few years ago (and had unforeseen affects on HK as the border areas became saturated with milk powder/baby formula tourists).

Matteo is in Hong Kong to set up a dodgy tainted milk formula business to export into Africa with some Chinese business partners led by Mr Feng (Kenneth Tsang) and his son Zhao (Carl Ng). His goings on bring him into contact with a Chinese woman, Jiazhen (Zhang Jingchu), who runs a restaurant business in memory of her son who was killed by tainted food.

The opening scenes are supposedly set in Mainland China where Jiazhen lives with her son. The establishing shots are definitely of the stock variety and I suspect that the close ups were shot in Hong Kong because the following shot, still supposedly in the Mainland, shows a part of Nam Sang Wai with the west end of Kai Kung Leng in the background.

The actual location is a now collapsed (according to a photo on Google Earth) boardwalk close to the Nam Sang Wai and Sing Kei stores - not far from the river boat crossing. 

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