From the Chinas: Busted Water Pipes & Back to the Past

Chinese box office numbers are crazy - I've got no idea how accurate the page I usually use is, because the numbers can be absolutely all over the place, with mega-blockbusters just absolutely rocketing through the top of the scale and head-scratching results like Return to Silent Hill having twice the opening of Busted Water Pipes last weekend, because the former is both foreign and bad, and, also, what do movie tickets cost in China, because these aren't big box-office numbers for a country of over a billion people?

At any rate, both these movies arrived in Boston this weekend, which was probably the roughest one for something to show up in North America of the new year so far - Send Help was probably the intended main attraction but Melania certainly looks like it took a number of screens out of circulation via four-walling and Iron Lung got a whole bunch of screens despite apparently not advertising much to movie audiences at all (I didn't see a single trailer in front of any sci-fi/horor/indie genre entry all month), although it probably has a ton of online fandom that I'm just not aware of because I don't game. As a result, these were scrapping for showtimes at the start of the weekend; I had to leave work early to get to a late afternoon show of Busted Water Pipes and Back to the Past was playing very early and very late at Boston Common on Saturday and Sunday. Apparently, though, you sell out a bunch of those shows and they'll find room; it's now got a full screen at Causeway Street and more accessible showtimes at Boston Common.

Personally, I like Busted Water Pipes more; and it's kind of a bummer that it's getting student/senior-friendly times at best and might be out of town after Wednesday - definitely worth catching if you get a chance!


Busted Water Pipes

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 30 January 2026 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Busted Water Pipes is one of the more impressively ridiculous movies I've seen lately: The filmmakers are committed to just piling one more bit of silliness on top of another for the whole running time, keeping things so far over the top that it can even ramp up the violence as it goes on while still feeling more slapstick than black comedy.

It opens with a hostage rescue in the capital city of fictional kingdom Ronham going spectacularly wrong, and the cop who led it, Yu Dahai (Eddie Peng Yuyan) transferred to the small town of Hoping even though it was his superior with political aspirations who provided bad information. A bona fide supercop, he basically wipes out crime in Hoping while waiting to be brought back, and seven years later that means the police station in this town could be shut down as an unnecessary expense. What he and his co-workers don't know is that Dahai's friend Luo Siji ("Allen" Ai Lun) is technically a fugitive in hiding, although he turns out to be a better spiritual leader than he ever was a crook, and isn't pleased when tomb-raider uncle Luo Yin (Zhang Qi) and two not-so-bright nephews show up looking for the tomb of legendary pirate Chen Yisao, more so when their psychopathic escaped convict cousin Luo Hao (Zhou You) joins them. The tomb, it turns out, is under the police station, and when the cops bust a water pipe trying to dig for it, that allows the Luos to kidnap plumber Li Baibai (Bu Yu) and use that as a way to gain access.

This skips a lot, because there are more jokes and side characters and determination to get from one to the other in the funniest way possible. There's little done that just advances the plot without having a punchline of some sort attached to it, and the filmmakers' response to needing something to move to the next piece is throwing something new in, even if it doesn't necessarily follow from what comes before.

It's a good thing that they've got a fair amount of material, because the movie would really fall apart otherwise. The same impulse that lets them throw a bunch of goofy jokes into the corners (like the identifiers on the back of Armed Accounting's Kevlar vests) also leads to not fleshing much out at all or abandoning gags they've maybe tapped out even though maybe those guys should be around more (having one character be a psychopath who will murder no longer useful characters helps, I suppose). The script can border on the incoherent, and tends to have two sidekicks any place where it could probably make do with one. It would probably be nice to have a few more ladies mixed in as well - the only one of any note is Dahai's daughter Xioahe, with Yang Chenxi funny enough in the role that one might spend a lot of the film's middle wondering where Xiaohe is during all this.

But there's a lot of good slapstick, and those skills translate into an action finale that is funny and absurd but which could also be dropped into a more serious action movie without a whole lot of damage. That's in large part due to Eddie Peng, who has done a fair amount of action but here gives his super-cop in exile this sort of comically puffed-up masculinity that's had its rougher edges shaved off so he can be larger than life but not a buffoon or playing as mean. He's countered by Zhou You's Luo Hao, who plays like the dumb killer in a Coen Brothers movie, too stupid and casual with his violence to really feel like an antagonist rather than an agent of chaos, which keeps the movie from landing in too-grim territory.

Busted Water Pipes is goofy as heck, and I bet it would be fun to see in a packed theater. Unfortunately, its North American release comes close enough on the heels of its Chinese one and on a week crowded enough that it's mostly playing awkward times and you get pockets of the room laughing rather than a roar. Maybe it hasn't quite done well enough in its home territory for good word of mouth to get to the diaspora, but it's a good enough time to have broad appeal.


Chum Chun Gei (Back to the Past)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2026 in AMC Boston Common #13 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it and the original series

It's oddly reassuring to me when I see that the things people bemoan about American pop culture are not exclusively our problems. For example, A Step Into the Past was a hit show on Hong Kong's TVB network a generation ago, and has had both a reboot (in 2018) and this theatrical sequel 24 years later. American companies aren't the only ones who mine decades-old IP like this, even when name recognition is the most the new project has going for it!

That series posits that in 1999, Hong Siu Lung (Louis Koo Tin-Lok) traveled back in time 2000 years to witness the coronation of the emperor who would unite China's seven warring kingdoms, only to find the man dead, and wound up training Chiu Poon (Raymond Lam Fung) to impersonate him lest history change. 25 years later, he's on the verge of accompanying it while Hong attempts to keep a low profile with wives Wu Ting-Fong (Jessica Hester Hsuan) & Kam Ching (Sonija Kwok Sin-Nae) and son Bowie (Kevin Chu Kam-Yin), ready to flee if the Emperor decides his "Grand Tutor" is now a liability. Along a parallel track in 2025, the man who was originally supposed to go back in time but took the fall for Hong's disappearance, Ken (Michael Miu Kiu-Wai), has just been released in prison and is looking for payback, forcing the scientists to send him, daughter Galie (Fay Bai Baihe) and a number of mercenaries back, where he intends to alter history by using holographic technology to replace the Emperor.

To what end? Cool special effects, basically; although there's lip service paid to Ken wanting to prove history can be changed and the mercenaries intending to loot the palace of lost treasures, it's hard to really grasp what his endgame is. He gets to bring back a lot of futuristic technology, though - a timeline where they built a time machine in 1999 is apparently one where phones are a combination of transparent plastic and holographic projection, a combination motorbike and hoverboard can shrink to something that fits in one's pocket in abject defiance of the law of conservation of mass, and armor that can repel even its time's automatic weapons, let alone the sharp sticks in play here. It's slick enough, though, although a little blandly black-and-silver in its design (producer/star/production mogul Koo's previous sci-fi film, Warriors of the Future, seems to have had the same look from the stills I've seen), but the mashup of futuristic and historical is kind of fun, more often than not.

The original series is on Tubi (or it isn't, apparently leaving at the end of January), so maybe I'll watch a bit to see if it makes this film better at some point. The movie's not bad, exactly, but doesn't really have a reason to be. It's set too early to pick up on the show's implied tease of Hong's son being destined to depose Chiu, there's no real time travel shenanigans in terms of paradoxes effect preceding cause, and on top of Ken not seeming to have a goal, all that material takes time away from what could be an interesting story about how Chiu has become a tyrant and the responsibility Hong bears for that. There are possibilities all over the place - is Hong shaping his son differently than he did Chiu, are there parallels in Bowie's and Galis' relationships to their fathers, is it wiser to maintain the steady status quo or to try to forge a better world? - but nothing winds up emerging as a theme, and the filmmakers never really find anything to do with the decent hook of Ken plotting to do what Hong did out of necessity. Stuff happens, but it's more a series of events than a story where anything really hits if you don't have previous attachment.

It's not entirely difficult to see what the film appears to be a success in both Hong Kong and the mainland (and filling seats in Boston when given a chance): Koo is good in a role that lets him do a bit of everything, and has put a lot of resources into it, with his "One Cool X" companies all over the credits. The returning cast is all pretty solid, enough that one can understand why they'd all be around even if there's not really enough for them to do, and newcomers like Bai Baihe and Kevin Chu carry their parts well. Action director Sammo Hung can still choreograph a pretty darn good fight, especially when it's not all visual effects. It feels like a blockbuster that does a fair job of satisfying long-time fans without leaving the next generation behind.

Maybe it works if you love the show, since it doesn't entirely fail for those of us who didn't know it existed before the movie started. Even not knowing much about the show, though, this seems like a bit of a missed opportunity, something that looks good on a rights-holder's balance sheet but no strong story of its own.