Icebreaking

利刃破冰

China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 89 mins.

Director: Peng Fa 彭发 [Danny Pang].

Rating: 2/10.

Ineptly mounted drug-busting drama has a chaotic script and little action.

STORY

Binhai city, somewhere in Guangdong, southern China, the present day, September. A huge, 235-kilo consignment of locally-made methamphetamine pills is intercepted while being trafficked off the coast by China’s coastguard and the Haizhou Frontier Police, in an operation led by Lin Haoran (Zhang Zijian), a CID captain. However, the HFP fails to capture the druglord behind the whole business. He now becomes suspicious, as the sea route always used to be a safe one, and now he’s lost not only a whole shipment but also his younger brother who was killed during the interception. When the HFP’s undercover agent, nicknamed Baiban (Li Zhenyu), is found washed up dead a few days later, the HFD goes into high gear to crush the drug-trafficking organisation. From examining traffic-camera footage, it traces a transport van used in the last shipment, and then the driver. The HFD then uncovers the methamphetamine plant hidden inside a wood-products factory. Now under pressure, druglord Yan Tiao (Shen Baoping) orders a halt to all activity for a while, thus causing the market price to rise. His decision also causes chaos among smaller dealers who still try to trade, including Na’na (Yu Yinggao), Yabing Huang (Kang Jihui) and a foreign buyer (Pawalit Mongkolpisit) who feels cheated out of his goods.

REVIEW

With drug-busting drama Icebreaking 利刃破冰, Hong Kong film-maker Peng Fa 彭发 [Danny Pang] belatedly joins his elder twin brother Peng Shun 彭顺 [Oxide Pang] in making Mainland message pictures – though way less successfully. Peng Fa is no stranger to working solo across the border, having previously directed the okay psycho-horror The Strange House 六世古宅 (2015) and the lame high-school movie Growing Pains 会痛的十七岁 (2017), both with young Mainland actress Xu Jiao 徐娇; but unlike his more talented sibling, who made a respectable fist of military potboilers My War 我的战争 (2016) and Towards the River Glorious 打过长江去 (2019), this is the first time Peng has taken on an official message movie. The result is catastrophic, an ineptly mounted anti-drugs saga whose plot barely makes sense and whose action is almost non-existent. The film limped away with a microscopic RMB2 million box office at the end of last year.

Whether by design or mistake, there’s no scriptwriter credited on the print – though posters name a certain Chen Tao 陈涛 as responsible for the mess. As the Frontier Police in a (fictional) southern coastal city hunts down a meth-trafficking organisation, characters pop up here and there without explanation or identification, plot continuity is non-existent, and a laughable attempt is even made to give the police hero (dependably played with a straight face by TV veteran Zhang Zijian 张子健) a personal family story, with a wife who’s pregnant and a niece whose boyfriend gets mixed up in drugs. Peng’s film-making largely consists of nervy camerawork and editing to convey a sense of realism and drama, but with a plot that’s as chaotic as this it scarcely matters. Churning music by Tu Jingjing 涂晶晶 and widescreen photography by Hou Mengyan 侯孟言 are both routine. And as a kind of desperate reference to past glories, Peng casts actor Pawalit Mongkolpisit, the deaf-mute assassin in the brothers’ first big hit, Bangkok Dangerous บางกอกแดนเจอรัส เพชฒฆาตเงียบ：อันตราย (1999), as a snarling foreign drug-dealer.

Though apparently set somewhere on the coast of Guangdong province, the film was actually shot in neighbouring Fujian. The “ice” in the English and Chinese titles (the latter literally meaning “A Sharp Blade Cleaves Ice”) refers to methamphetamine.

CREDITS

Presented by Xinying Film (Fujian) (CN), Guangdong Century Coast Pictures (CN), Guangdong Tianying International Film (CN), Dongchen Shidai (Beijing) Film & TV Media (CN). Produced by Xinying Film Kang Film Studio (CN), Qingdao Wanshu Liuguang Film (CN).

Script: uncredited. Photography: Hou Mengyan. Editing: Guo Kang, Du Yajun, Zhang Shuqi, Zhang Hui, Chen Hao. Music: Tu Jingjing. Art direction: Yao Haibin. Styling: Sai Xiaochun. Costumes: Li Yuheng. Sound: Su Sheng, Su Hao, Wu Chen. Action: Zhu Xian. Executive direction: Zheng Wei, Wu Guoshan. Postproduction direction: Guo Kang.

Cast: Zhang Zijian (Lin Haoran, Haizhou Frontier Police CID captain), Wang Yutian (Zhou Meng, Haizhou Frontier Police CID detective), Yang Gang (Jiang Yizhou, Haizhou Frontier Police CID detective), Pawalit Mongkolpisit (Chatchai, foreign drug dealer), Shi Zhaoqi (Hai Zhenqiang, Haizhou police chief), Shen Baoping (Yan Tiao, big boss), Wang Yan (Chen Mengye, Lin Haoran’s wife), Kang Jihui (Yabing Huang), Yu Yinggao (Na’na), Yang Na’na (Susu), Li Jingyi (Huang Ruilian), Li Zhenyu (Baiban/Whiteboard/Shen Lifei, police undercover), Liang Guorong (Frontier Police vice-chief), Kongque Gege [Li Dayong] (The Professor), Liu Yingyi (Lin Xiaoguo, Lin Haoran’s niece), Zhang Haoyang (Wei, Lin Xiaoguo’s boyfriend).

Release: China, 25 Dec 2019.