At The Treshold of an Era
(2000)


Cast: Gallen Lo, Roger Kwok, Sunny Chan, Kenix Kwok, Flora Chan, Nicky Wu, Maggie Siu, Lisa Wong, Chan Pui

My Rating: HHH

ATE is a 100 episodes series that TVB made to celebrate the new millenium. Many big TVB stars were in this series. Anyway, it was a disappointment because after they aired it in HK, II its rating was not as good as they expected. A lot of people said that it was boring and too long, more than that people were bored with Gallen Lo who was in every big production of TVB.

Brief Summary:
Gallen's family was betrayed by his uncle (played by Chan Pui) As a result, Gallen grew up with his anger and ambition. He had to take care of his family - his father,mother, younger brother(Hawick Lau) and younger sister.(Grace Yip) He loved to do things his own way, he didn't care if it was moral or not. He would do anything to get what he wanted. Gallen had two best friends - Roger and Sunny. Roger worked in a bank and he was generous and honest, but sometimes led into the wrong way by Gallen. Sometimes he was considered stupid because of this. Roger got a happy family - his father and mother. Sunny was an architect who was very idealistic and honest. He came from a bad family - his father was a retired cop who always cared about money. His older brother and sister were the same as his father. Since Sunny was so upright, he and Gallen had a fight very often.

Kenix was an orphan who was raised by an old lady. She got into these three guys' lives and all of them fell in love with her, but at first Gallen was the only one she loved. Gallen also got involved with Flora's character, a lawyer who was a daughter of Lisa Wong . Lisa was married to Chan Pui after she broke up with Flora's father. Chan Pui had three sons - - Donald (Joe Ma ), Jason (I don't know the real name of this guy) and Joe. (Nicky Wu) This family had many secrets and lies betweem them.

As you all know, Sunny turned bad and killed a lot of people. Anyway, he died in the end and we were introduced a new villain "Sunny's younger brother" played by Louis Koo. Louis will revenge Gallen for his brother's death in ATE II.

Review:
I think ATE is not THAT bad like some people said. Even though it was a little boring because it was "Gallen in a big production" again, his performance was great. But Sunny is my favourite character because I think his character was so pitiful ( Well...except when he killed TOO many people) The reason he changed from a good guy into a bad one was almost believable. (I'm not sure if the guy that used to be such an extremely nice guy can turn into such a mean murderer in such a short period of time.) He lost everything in a short time and the most important, he lost his belief in good deeds. His character was like a tragedy esp. his ending was sooo sad. Even though I want him to be able to start his new life again, I think it's impossible since he killed way a lot of people plus TVB also needed to make a sequal. So, what we'll get is the new villain, Louis. About the other characters I think Roger was too naive in this series, he was a very good guy, but he was way too weak. Gallen learned to be a better person little by little in the series and it was quite believable. Kenix's character was nothing special esp. after she got married to Sunny, her role was less important. I think Flora's character was more interesting. Anyway, I think the best female character was Tina, Maggie Siu's character.



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