General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

David Loman (大尾鲈鳗)

David Loman (大尾鲈鳗) is a 2013 Taiwanese gangster comedy directed by Chiu Li-Kwan (邱瓈宽), in which a small-town photographer accidentally becomes a crime boss and renames himself David Loman, an English name that puns on the Taiwanese phrase for a big-time hooligan.¹^•² Released in Taiwan on 1 February 2013 for the Lunar New Year holiday, it became one of the highest-grossing Taiwanese films of its era and spawned a 2016 sequel.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Original title	大尾鲈鳗 (Da wei lu man); English title David Loman⁵
Director	Chiu Li-Kwan (邱瓈宽), a veteran manager and producer directing her first feature¹^•⁶
Release	1 February 2013, Taiwan; 98 minutes; distributed by Warner Bros (Taiwan)³^•⁷
Cast	Chu-Ko Liang (猪哥亮) as David Loman, Amber Kuo, and Yo Yang (Tony Yang)⁵
Taiwan box office	NT$413 million nationwide, more than three times its Taipei gross⁸
Local ranking	Fifth among the top-earning Taiwanese films in the local market, described as a "New Year's Film"⁴
Sequel	David Loman 2 (2016), released for Lunar New Year 2016 with about NT$140 million in box office⁹

Spoilers

Plot

The story is set in Taiwan in the 1990s, before the island was fully urbanized. Zhu Dade (朱大德), played by Chu-Ko Liang, is an ordinary photographer in a small country town raising his young daughter Zhu Xiaoqin (朱小芹, played by Amber Kuo); the two move to the city of Taizhong in central Taiwan to seek a better life.¹^•¹⁰ As the economy booms and gang warfare spreads, Zhu accidentally sets off a major shootout that kills the rest of the gang, and he unwittingly becomes the man in charge.⁵

Renaming himself David Loman, he stands at the top of the local underworld for over a decade, and the price of his fame and power is losing his daughter, who grows resentful of him.⁵ A second thread follows the young Xiao He (贺翔, played by Yo Yang), whose fortune-teller father Old He is killed after being mistaken for Zhu, whom he closely resembles; Zhu finds the son, and the two form a team that, together with the reconciled daughter, sets out to avenge Old He.¹⁰ The film satirizes the modernization of Taiwanese organized crime: the gang goes corporate and international, coordinates through an online fan page, and its boss behaves less like a fearsome triad chief than a neighborhood fixer solving residents' small problems.¹¹

Sequel

Chiu Li-Kwan reassembled much of the original team, including Chu-Ko Liang, Amber Kuo, Yo Yang, cinematographer Lin Bing-hua, and editor Chen Po-wen, for David Loman 2 (大尾鲈鳗2), released for Lunar New Year 2016.¹ In the sequel, the retired Loman runs a guesthouse with his girlfriend while his daughter and her partner raise a son, and the plot turns on a kidnapping and the return of an enemy from the first film.¹² It earned nearly NT$140 million, a solid result for a Taiwanese film, though its release also fed a public backlash among filmgoers who reject the vulgar style of some Taiwanese comedies.⁹ The sequel was also criticized by an anthropologist for its portrayal of the Tao (Yami) indigenous people, including a scene in which Tao-language protest chants are subtitled only as "protest" without translation.¹⁸

Production and cast

Chiu Li-Kwan, known in Taiwan's entertainment industry as a leading producer, made the film as her first feature as writer and director, with associate director Huang Chaoliang (黄朝亮).⁶^•¹ It was produced by Polyface Films (柏合丽影业股份有限公司) and Kuan Yin Mu Film Production (宽银幕电影制作有限公司), shot on the Alexa digital camera, and edited by Chen Po-Wen.¹⁰^•³ The producer Zhu Yanping (朱延平) served as supervising director.¹²

The cast mixes veteran Taiwanese variety-show comedians with younger screen stars. Chu-Ko Liang, a hugely popular television host, leads as Zhu Dade; Kang Kang (康康) plays the antagonist; and supporting roles are filled by familiar faces including Su Zhu, Lin Mei-Hsiu, Lotus Wang, Miao Ke-li, and Ma Nien-hsien.⁶^•⁵ The premiere on 31 January 2013 at the Red House in Ximending drew more than 200 celebrities on the red carpet, and advance block bookings by entertainers across seven Ximending cinemas, 29 screenings, and 8,888 seats brought in nearly NT$2.5 million before official release.¹³

Box office

The film opened strongly in the crowded Lunar New Year season, taking NT$16.0 million (US$534,000) in its first three days in Taiwan.⁷ Sixteen days after release it had earned NT$350 million nationwide, breaking the pace of the previous record-setter Din Tao (2012), which had needed 45 days to pass NT$300 million.¹⁴ It finished with NT$122 million (US$4.07 million) in Taipei, the highest-grossing domestic film of 2013 in that market, and a reported total above US$14 million across Taiwan.⁷^•¹⁵

The nationwide figure of NT$413 million was more than three times its Taipei gross, an unusually strong regional skew that illustrates how films with a strong local flavor perform in central and southern Taiwan.⁸ A dissertation study of the top ten earning Taiwanese films in the local market places David Loman fifth, and notes that it raised wide discussion precisely because of its box-office success.⁴

Language and reception

The film's comedy is built on wordplay in Taiwanese Hoklo (southern Min dialect spoken by many Taiwanese) that does not translate. The title itself is an example: 大尾鲈鳗, literally "big-tailed moray eel," sounds in Taiwanese like 大尾流氓, meaning a big-time hooligan, which is why the English title is the invented name David Loman.²^•¹⁶ Other gags turn Mandarin phrases into Taiwanese homophones with vulgar meanings, and the humor draws on the tradition of the restaurant show, the bawdy live entertainment associated with Chu-Ko Liang's television career.²^•¹⁷ This local flavor is credited with drawing older audiences in central and southern Taiwan to cinemas during the New Year holiday, though it also drew negative reviews from critics who dismissed the film as vulgar slapstick.²

Critical reception was divided. The Sino-Cinema review rated it 6/10, calling it a very local gangster comedy that gets by on its production values and light touch.¹ MovieXclusive's reviewer found the jokes unfunny and criticized a heavily Mandarin-dubbed export version that blunted the dialect wordplay.⁶ On IMDb the film holds a rating of 4.2/10 from 373 users.⁵ Commentators have also read the film more charitably as a snapshot of 1990s Taiwan, with its nostalgia for the period and its satire of gangster modernization.⁴^•¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 2010–2014 films › Titles symbols to L

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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