Consider me pleasantly surprised with this one. When I heard that top Taiwanese acting stars Alec Su and Ariel Lin was teaming up for a cop movie together, I sorta raised an eyebrow and went “huh?” Love them both but I would have preferred a drama out of their pairing rather than what might be a run-of-the-mill B-grade domestic movie. Filming was completed earlier in the Summer before Ariel’s period drama King of Lan Ling aired and vaulted her to yet another level of popularity. Alec hasn’t done a Taiwan movie or drama is nearly 10 years, spending all his time in Hong Kong and Mainland China focused on a varied and interesting serious acting career. One has to dig in the vault, or have a long memory like me, to remember his idol acting days in Qiong Yao melodramas such as Princess Returning Pearl with Vicky Zhao and Ruby Lin, or his two dramas with Chae Rim in Love in the Aegean Sea and Young Yang’s Clan. Ariel and Alec’s movie is called Sweet Alibis (Chinese title 甜蜜殺機 which means Sweet Deadly Danger) and the first teaser was released last week at the start of the Taipei Film Festival. The movie premieres in January 2014 and it looks hilarious and interesting based on the teaser trailer.

Alec plays a senior cop who is notorious for being a coward. He’s got all the training but none of the guts. When a situation arises, he’s always nowhere to be found, usually off in the toilet with a convenient stomach ailment. Ariel is a newbie cop who just graduated from the police academy. Turns out she’s the daughter of the Chief of Police and eager to make her crime fighting mark. Her daddy gets the entire police force to help him keep his daughter safe, which ends up partnering her with Alec’s most useless cop ever so that they never ever get near any real danger. As fate would have it, they are sent on a useless mission which turns out to involve a murder and a big conspiracy. The movie is billed as a romantic thriller so I’m hoping Alec and Ariel’s character have some romantic subplot, otherwise it’s such a waste of partnering them up together. Plus I’m a sucker for the loser beta male and alpha girl in charge reversal of gender stereotypes. Check out the cute teaser below! On a side note, Alec was asked about his good friend Nicky Wu‘s recent outing of his relationship with Liu Shi Shi and he gave his best wishes and also teased that he would love to find the right girl as well. All his same generation good friends are all settling down (Nicky, Vicky, Jimmy Lin), leaving only him and Ruby these days as the golden bachelor and bachelorette.

Movie trailer for Sweet Alibis: