Men With No Shadows 不速之約

Heavily inspired/borrowed by the Japanese manga-turned-anime called Death Note, Raymond Lam plays the demon in 不速之約 (Men With No Shadows), who torments Bobby Au under unusual circumstances.  Bobby, upon realizing how unfulfilled his life is, pleaded relentlessly for a second chance to make things right — confessing his love to the woman of his dreams (Tavia Yeung), finishing his lifelong medical research to cure her extremely rare form of allergies, and getting a chance to ensure that everyone in his family is well off and taken care of after he’s gone.  Amused with such trivial concerns, the devil grants him a second chance at life; however, it doesn’t take long for Bobby to realize that the devil’s new-found generosity is not without consequences.

Thoughts & Review

There is only one word to describe Men With No Shadows: annoying.  TVB must really hate Raymond Lam — I don’t think any leading man of his fame and stature has ever, in the history of TVB, done so many consecutively terrible series.  I had to re-watch the last two episodes thrice because I kept falling asleep in the middle of them.  I am so disappointed because the ending feels like such a cop-out after how great the first half of this series is.

It makes me wonder whether or not TVB purposefully gives him terrible scripts to work with — because of his stature (pull in ratings for a bad series) or because somewhere along the way, he offended someone on top of the TVB pyramid.  Men With No Shadows proves that Raymond Lam can act when he’s not obsessively posing for the camera.  In fact, his role here allows him to show more emotional range then all the work he’s done in the past 2-3 years combined, but the script is wretched!  It’s such a waste of talent because the cast is fantastic.  Near the middle, it seems like everyone involved is simply doing the best they can with what they were given with.

The plot is painfully drawn out — full of clichés, plot holes, and pointless family drama that has nothing to do with the story.  I am so disappointed because we finally get to see Raymond in an evil role, yet the producers had to inject him with some humanity.  There are various aspects that are illogical, and the attempt to explain these incidents, although makes sense, completely voids the allure of the initial concept.

By the end of it, all the characters are so annoying that I just wanted to give up entirely.  The writers could have gone in so many interesting directions but they chose to box themselves in from the beginning and ruin everything.  Tavia’s and Power’s character has been reduced to nothing more than a victim and a puppet; Bobby is an angry, bitter weakling;  and Raymond is a sobbing mess.   Only in the last ten minutes of the finale does the show somewhat redeem itself, but even then it comes across as trite and typical of TVB’s happy endings.  There are a lot of serious, underlying issues that are never dealt with; everyone just took the easy way out and pointed fingers, blaming Raymond, when all he did was manipulate them with what was already there.

Conclusion

Overall, you’re not missing anything if you skip this one.  Men Without Shadows is worth watching if you are a fan of Raymond Lam but be warned, the overall themes and conflicts are banal at best.  You can avoid this if you are a fan of Bobby Au, Tavia Yeung or Power Chan since they’ve had significantly better roles in the past.  The only character who I consistently enjoyed watching is Sire Ma’s, but she needs to work on her delivery —  she sounds really whiny sometimes, especially when she’s suppose to be angry.  Those of you who love Death Note can steer clear of this as well — nothing can beat the original.