Captain of Destiny is a TVB production that revolves on the historical Qing Period where the conflict between pirates and the Qing army came to a peak.
My thoughts on this series? I highly enjoyed it.
Performances alone, some excelled. Ruco Chan as 11th Prince/ Man-Ho - Man-Ho is someone rather eager, filial at times and sometimes nice heartened. Man ho can be said to be quite over eager and ambitious, where his actions of be the hero of the day by travelling to places to solve crimes and investigate bribery however does not earn him much credit by the emperor. Instead, Man-Ho gets cold treatment by the brother as well as his brothers, but Man-Ho is by no means undeterred. He nominates himself to become the lead commander in destroying the pirates down in Southern China.
Ruco gave an explosive performance with his role as Man-Ho. He was convincing as assertive, cunning, though quite stubborn. Ruco made his character as someone you will cheer for.
Joel Chan as Wong Yat-Hin stole some limelight with some attention-demanding performance as a merchant. I never quite enjoyed any of Joel's performances in the past (with the exception of the Last Steep Ascent) but I think he fitted his role very well. Sometimes you will feel his Wong Yat-Hin is a bastard, other times you will respect him.
Grace Chan portrayed Wong Tai Mui, who is supposed to be cutesy, opinionated and have a strong personality. By that I mean being stubborn and sticking to her own set of values and beliefs and judging everyone else's as 'wrong'. That already makes her character quite annoying but Grace miraculously managed to make it highly irritating by the end of this series.
No doubt Grace Chan gave an over the top performance. Most of the time she would yell, scream and move dramatically. By that I mean big body movements that were out of shape or looked unusual for the situation. You can say she was a pain to watch in this series with the uncontrolled and loud performance, but there were some redeeming factors such as her expressive facial expressions I think she perfected in some of the rare scenes of this series. Back at the start of the series, her sister was mentioning, "Are there no more good men left in this world?" and Grace said, "Well, there still is" and smiled to the night sky. In the first episode as well Grace was trying to stop a car with the hostage in there and her face of suspecting something was wrong was well done as well. Grace Chan excels when it comes to expressions in my opinion but unfortunately she has to tone down. Her boyfriend Kevin Cheng perfectly translated her performance, "Grace used to too much effort. When you put too much effort it means you didn't put any effort at all" meaning it's inappropriate to always be too hyper. That being said, this horrid performance still cannot deny the greatness of her two performances in 'Overachievers' and 'Raising the Bar' and I'm sure Grace has got the message from everyone so I'm confident she will only get better for 'Blue Veins' and 'Brother's Keeper II'.
As always, Lau Kong gives a competent performance as the emperor even if his emperor was weird. I couldn't read the emperor's mind, did he want the brothers to treat each other peacefully and with virtue or did he not mind them being acting their self-interest? I feel that his character was badly written and inconsistent sometimes.
Elaine Yiu as Imperial Consort Yim - Sorry but Elaine's performance compared to the others was sub-par. The way she speak was no means scary and she lacked aura.
Imagine if the producers casted better actors. Ruco Chan as 11th prince and others like Him Law, Vincent Wong as the other princes, perhaps Charmaine Sheh as Consort Yim. This series would have done much better.
My verdict of this series is that it excelled with some great acting, explosive war battles, grand scenes, sharp dialogue, some impressive computer generated effects, exceptionally nice filming location and sets and a not too bad story with a fusion of palace drama, pirates and navy conflicts. But, a big but, is that this series flattered with the irritating emergence of Wong Tai Mui, Tony Hung's unremarkable performance and a lot of stupid moments.
Worth a watch but prepare for cringing.
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