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Edmund Lee

This article contains spoilers.
4/5 stars
The highest grossing Hong Kong film of all time returns for another crack at the local box office with this extended version, which starts screening on April 4 – just in time for the Ching Ming Festival – with 12 minutes of previously unseen footage.
The Last Dance revolves around Dominic (Dayo Wong Tze-wah), a debt-ridden wedding planner who tries his hand at being a funeral agent out of desperation, and Master Man (Michael Hui Koon-man), a Taoist priest who struggles to stay on good terms with his offspring, Ben (Chu Pak-hong) and Yuet (Michelle Wai Sze-nga).
The breakthrough third feature of writer-director Anselm Chan Mou-yin, this poignant family drama is the front runner for this month’s Hong Kong Film Awards with 18 nominations, including best picture.


For those who have managed to ignore the hype since the film’s release in November 2024, it’s perhaps not a bad idea to skip this review and go into your first viewing of it without knowing too much about the plot details.
People who have watched the film before should note, however, that the restored scenes are mostly in the first half and add little to the central storyline they were likely most captivated by – namely, the curse and blessing of family ties experienced by Man and his two adult children.
The closest this version comes to supplementing that are a couple of uncharacteristically comical scenes early in the film, when Dominic offers to introduce Ben to the director of an elite school – played by a smirking Vincent Kok Tak-chiu – that Ben is looking to get his son into.


The most significant added scene sees Dominic visit his father’s niche in the cemetery with his stepbrother, played by Sham Ka-ki. The revelation that Dominic was abandoned by his father brings a different layer to the film’s most memorable gag: the remark by others that he is lucky his parents are no longer alive for his unhappy clients to curse at.
A follow-up beach scene involving Dominic and his long-term girlfriend, Jade (Catherine Chau Ka-yee), then partly explains his reluctance to become a father himself later in the narrative.

Ironically, the most superfluous new scene is also the best one – when a double-boiled soup seller, played by Elaine Jin Yan-ling, tells Dominic about her late husband. Jin, who was excellent in Chan’s previous film, Ready or Rot, delivers a heartbreaking performance, though it is easy to see why her scene would be one of the first to go.
Overall, one gets the feeling that these deleted scenes should have been bonus content on the film’s home media releases – rather than the prime reason it is getting a re-release in cinemas after such a short break.
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Dayo Wong as Dominic and Catherine Chau as Jade in a still from The Last Dance (extended version). The film (category III, Cantonese) is directed by Anselm Chan. Photo: Emperor Motion Pictures

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Sham Ka-ki as Dominic’s stepbrother in a still from The Last Dance (extended version). Photo: Emperor Motion Pictures

Dayo Wong as wedding planner Dominic (left) and Chu Pak-hong as priest’s son Ben in a still from The Last Dance (extended version). Photo: Emperor Motion Pictures

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The highest grossing Hong Kong film ever returns with 12 minutes of extra scenes that add some comedy, but do they warrant a re-release?


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Review | The Last Dance (extended version) movie review: should you catch these deleted scenes?

The highest grossing Hong Kong film ever returns with 12 minutes of extra scenes that add some comedy, but do they warrant a re-release?