Miss Shampoo Review: Vivian Sung, Daniel Hong, Kai Ko Delight In Quirky Mix Of Romance, Gangsters & (Bad) Haircuts

Miss Shampoo (M18)

Starring Vivian Sung, Daniel Hong, Kai Ko

Directed by Giddens Ko

Bad boy meets cute hairdresser. 

Taiwanese flick Miss Shampoo sounds like a sweet, ditzy Giddens Ko comedy.

Well, not totally since people get stabbed here.

It goes from the brittle — hair, that is — to the brutal, meaning bloody fights. A mish-mash of romance, drama, comedy, violence and, oh, the thug life.

There are the expected amusing scenes in which gangsters pack a suddenly popular hair salon for haircuts. Along with gang warfare where body parts are, er, trimmed.

The Ah Lian, Fen (Ko fave Vivian Sung), cuts hair. The Ah Beng, Tai (Nine One One rapper Daniel Hong), has his underlings cut fingers off poor saps who cheat at the gambling den he controls.

Do the genres mix well? Just about, despite a cop-out ending here.

But only because Ko (You Are The Apple Of My Eye, Till We Meet Again) is a writer-director who’s good at coming-of-age tales. In this case, coming-of-rage by vengeful volatile pai kias as Ko spends ample time defining both genders’ essential low-SES characteristics and motivations.

Especially that basic need of the liu mang (Mandarin for hoodlum) — Tai calls himself a “brother”, not a “gangster — to claim possession by way of bedding the chick which his crew keeps egging him on to do in crude Hokkien-laced bravado.

Fen demands womanly conditions for the deed. Tai promises his manhood for posterity in caveman terms. “Starting from today, my d*** is your d***,” he declares as Fen’s family waits anxiously downstairs in a funny, knowing, hammed-up sequence. Director Ko has this great skill in filling up blank spaces ably with exaggerated family members. 

On the dark stormy night of their first encounter, the badly injured dude barges into the girl’s sad, empty hair salon to hide from an ambush by ruthless Thai hoods who slashed his boss to death. Grateful for her help, he becomes her smitten customer, getting his long hair shorn and guaranteeing protection while sending her gifts and loads of lackeys to be similarly re-styled too.  

There’s dirty construction business afoot involving rival gangs, dubious cops and sleazy politicians. All intertwined Taiwan-style where an effective facedown at the dead leader’s funeral wake signals an unfinished war. 

Fen’s a hair-washing baseball fan turned accidental moll. Tai is the default boss of his crew after surviving the attack. It’s a situation that causes dissent from resident hothead Long Legs (Kai Ko, another Giddens fave from You Are The Apple Of My Eye) who sees his boss-buddy turning soft and civilised going gaga for the gal while neglecting the face-saving urgency for revenge.

Here, this could have been a Korean-style screwball comedy.

But Giddens Ko has trusted accomplices for his hairy crime pic.              

Hong stays cool, almost nonchalantly calm, looking like a chubbier Jay Chou as he mostly leaves the male display of aggression to Kai Ko as the eager-for-action sidekick.

And you’d never buy this idea of smart, sharp-eyed Sung as a hairdresser. But she has the essential girl-next-door appeal of being the idealistic, disappointed heart of this story which director Ko ploughs as a signature forte — the sense of needing to leave — in his films. The scene where Fen discovers that the baseball idol she worships isn’t who she thinks he is is quite superb.  

Miss Shampoo is untypically Giddens Ko-gritty.     

Photos: GV Pictures/Clover Films