In order to save her people from being killed by a dangerous project of Xuan, Shan, a young beautiful mermaids has sent to kill him, but she falls in love with him instead, so he does his best to stop the reclamation for her sake, but things come worse, when an evil organisation hijacks Shan, so Xuan struggles against saving her.
In The Mermaid, Chow never forgets that the camera is the funniest tool at his disposal, and the only one that speaks in a language that everyone can understand.
Chow cares mostly about Liu and Shan's love story - how their spiritual lives transcend their class differences. Yet, Chow balances romantic concerns with the sociological message. Most American films today...work backwards.
Chow habitués will be primed for hyperbolic acting, ludicrous wirework, ugly CGI and outlandish action sequences. Rest assured, those points will be satisfied.
Chow and his army of writers (seriously, it took nine people to write this) get terrific support from a strong cast of regulars and newcomers who really sell the story, cheesy special effects aside.
Like an ecological Lust, Caution, this contempo fairy tale about a mermaid who falls for the evil developer she's been sent to seduce and assassinate is strikingly relevant to China
You've already seen most of what Chow and his seven(!) co-screenwriters have crafted, and you've usually seen it with greater coherence and more impressive CGI.