Cold War

寒战

Hong Kong, 2012, colour, 2.35:1, 101 mins.

Directors: Liang Lemin 梁乐民 [Longman Leung], Lu Jianqing 陆剑青 [Sunny Luk].

Rating: 7/10.

After a gripping first half, this ambitious police thriller becomes much more routine.

STORY

Hong Kong, the present day, early December. One evening in Wangjiao [Mong Kok] district, a bomb explodes in a cinema; later that night, after investigating a crash by a drunk driver in Central, an Emergency Unit van and its five members are hijacked in New Territories South and disappear. With Zeng Xiangrong (Wang Minde), the police commissioner, away at a conference in Copenhagen extolling Hong Kong as “Asia’s safest city”, deputy commissioner (operations) Li Wenbin (Liang Jiahui) appoints himself Acting Commissioner and takes charge of the situation. He codenames the operation Cold War and authorises a raid by SDU Commander Shi Migao (An Zhijie) on a shipyard in Qingyi [Tsing Yi]. All that is found, however, are illegal immigrants and five dummies rigged to explosives. Liu Jiehui (Guo Fucheng), deputy commissioner (management), thinks Li Wenbin has exceeded his authority and acted rashly as his son, Li Jiajun (Peng Yuyan), is among those kidnapped. He doesn’t agree with Li Wenbin’s suspicion that the kidnappers may have a high-ranking mole among the police, and also consults privately with Lu Minghua (Liu Dehua), head of the Security Bureau. Following a challenge to his authority by Liang Ziwei (Yang Caini), the public relations chief, and then by Liu Jiehui and Li Wenbin’s own deputy Kuang Zhili (Lin Jiadong), Li Wenbin is forced to stand down and Liu Jiehui takes his place. After dumping the van’s seriously wounded driver (Wei Jiaxiong) outside a hospital, the kidnappers demand HK$93 million for the return of the van and the other four crew. Liu Jiehui authorises the money to be drawn from the Kowloon Bay treasury but is then told to bring only a third of it, personally, to a handover spot. The operation ends disastrously. A week later, the ICAC receives documents from an anonymous source, “Whistleblower”, implicating Liu Jiehui in the whole affair. He’s hawled in for questioning by ambitious young ICAC officer, Zhang Guobiao (Li Zhiting).

REVIEW

Hong Kong writer-directors Liang Lemin 梁乐民 [Longman Leung], a former production designer, and Lu Jianqing 陆剑青 [Sunny Luk], a veteran a.d.) are supported by some heavy acting artillery in their first feature but, despite several scenes that show names like Guo Fucheng 郭富城 [Aaron Kwok] and Liang Jiahui 梁家辉 [Tony Leung Ka-fai] at the top of their game, Cold War 寒战 hardly lives up to the promise of its first half. For all the slickness and adrenalin pump, the film suffers from the perennial Hong Kong problem of a weakly developed script just when things are getting interesting. Starting out as a terrorist thriller crossed with a mole-in-the-police-force drama, it’s initially gripping, with its combination of personal antagonism and smartly-staged action sequences, but from the halfway point becomes progressively routine, with a trail of undeveloped characters and rushed denouements.

As a mole drama, it has none of the simmering drama of Infernal Affairs 无间道 (2002), despite a good set-up. What looks to be the central conflict – a political struggle between the operations and management branches of Hong Kong’s police force, represented by Liang and Guo’s deputy commissioners – motors the opening half-hour as the cops are held to ransom by a mastermind who’s kidnapped a high-tech police van and its five members. This results in some attention-grabbing drama between the two, with the grizzled Liang chewing the scenery as an operations vet while the cool, buttoned-up Guo bides his time as a crafty management type. Both have some terrific scenes together and apart, climaxing in an electric confrontation between the two that has hardly been equalled in Hong Kong mainstream cinema.

Directors Liang and Lu follow this opening half-hour with a 10-minute ransom handover sequence that’s equally well staged and ends with fireworks, effectively closing the movie’s first half. As part two opens a week later, the operations/management battle is ditched in favour of seeming to develop the mole plot from a different angle, as the anti-corruption ICAC goons become involved. Li Zhiting 李治廷  [Aarif Lee] (Echoes of the Rainbow 岁月神偷, 2010; Bruce Lee My Brother 李小龙, 2010) helps to reboot the drama with some first-rate playing of a cocky young investigator, but soon the wind starts seeping out of the bag as Liang and Lu opt for action over character drama and huge gaps in logic that hint at a much longer original.

Liang Jiahui remains a formidable acting presence, especially in a scene where he demolishes the oily bravado of Li’s upstart; but it’s Guo who’s the real surprise of the movie, with a tightly controlled performance as a police suit that’s the heart of the movie. Other characters drift in and out of focus in the script, like the deputies played by Lin Jiadong 林家栋 [Gordon Lam] and Qian Jiale 钱嘉乐 [Chin Ka-lok], while superstar Liu Dehua 刘德华 [Andy Lau] pops up in an unconvincing cameo as Hong Kong’s Security Bureau chief, actress Yang Caini 杨采妮 [Charlie Young] is all but thrown away as a PR chief, and ditto Yin Ziwei 尹子维  [Terence Yin] and An Zhijie 安志杰 [Andy On] as senior officials. The script is littered with references to relationships that receive little screen time – a prior history between Guo and Yang’s characters; Liang’s relationship with his son, played by Taiwan’s Peng Yuyan 彭于晏 [Eddie Peng] – but could have helped fuel a more considered two-hour drama. The climactic sequence, which should explain the motivation for the whole thing, is very weakly written.

With its clean, aniseptic interiors, courtesy p.d. Mo Shaozong 莫少宗 [Alex Mok] (The Drummer 战鼓, 2007; Perfect Wedding 抱抱俏佳人, 2010), the film is always good to look at and the big symphonic score by Jin Peida 金培达 [Peter Kam] cranks up the excitement in the atmospheric first half. It’s never made clear whether the persistent emphasis on Hong Kong being “Asia’s safest city”, and the pride and dedication of its police force, is ironic or not – Jin’s score and an overdone late scene between Liang and Guo hint that it’s not – and seems like another lost opportunity in the script. Maybe things will become clearer in the sequel promised by the coda, which sets up one character as a psychopath of truly evil dimensions.

CREDITS