6/10
Traumatic movie experience
24 August 2008
'The Untold Story aka Human Meat Roast Pork Buns'

I first had a chance to watch this movie when I was a kid about 13 years of age in my junior high, believe it or not this movie was widely spoken at that time in the place where I live (Medan,Indonesia), of course considering the graphical content and nudity of the movie, I only have the chance to watch it together with several buddies while nobody's attending home. What happened was...one of my mate dispersed halfway the movie, as for me, after watching it, I feel terribly remorse within because it haunted me day after day for long enough than I could remember, especially that Wong figure make me really sick and guts out.

Last Sunday, 24th August 2008, after 15 year I have another chance to watch this movie again. It's much different this time, kinda nostalgic and I found the scenes more bearable compare to watching it in the older day, but still I prepare extra guts and it still portrays a very horrifying and disturbing scenes even compared to modern Hollywood gory/slasher flick like 'Saw' and 'Hostel' alike. So it was fair to say that one should never claim to have watched 'the most' gory or terrifying film in modern cinema before ever taste a chunk of this Hong Kong classic cinematic horror.

I wouldn't go so far to say that this movie is great, but I can point out few points that distinguish 'The Untold Story' from movie alike:

1.The acting of the lead (Anthony Wong) is unbelievable brilliant, as the bun man , only by the evil look of his eyes you could tell how vicious and mean he is. And he really deserved to be the only lead actor from CAT III Hong Kong movie to ever win the best actor category in Hong Kong Film Award history.

2. The dark and merciless scenes contain of extreme graphic violence subject to children, the sadistic method of killing and diabolical suicide attempt, police and cell brutality, etc, all those scenes are somehow cross the line, thank God there's some crunchy humor poured onto the film. Well, some silly humor wouldn't do any harm in such a dark material.

3. The originality of the movie's theme itself has become like a trend-setter at Hong Kong cat III film industry at that time, many of which trailed the very same theme despite of the controversy, and the movie itself later spawned its sequel of The Untold Story II and III respectively, of which none has the quality equal or even close to the original.

4. This is one of the movie despite explaining everything in the title and poster still make you feel like watching it, under the account of curiosity.

As a matter of fact I wouldn't ever recommend such a disturbing movie to anyone, but for those who like to test the limit of tolerance, well this one is surely worth a notice. Strongly not recommended for age below 17, based on what I experienced...
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