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Review: Cesium Fallout (2024)

Cesium Fallout

焚城

Hong Kong/China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 135 mins.

Director: Pan Yaoming 潘耀明 [Anthony Pun].

Rating: 6/10.

Technically polished disaster movie doesn’t reach down very far in either emotion or originality, despite a couple of good lead performances.

STORY

Hong Kong, Nov 1996. At an Asian Financial Forum, Financial Secretary Fan Weili (Liu Dehua) announces simplified customs clearances for foreign containers re-exporting goods. This is intended to help boost Hong Kong’s throughput volume but some fear it could make the territory a smugglers’ paradise. By 2007 Fan Weli has been retired from politics for 10 years and is now an environmental pollution specialist. In a TV interview he’s asked whether a fire at a cargo terminal back in 1996 was due to his new policy of streamlined customs checks: some containers had explosive chemicals, and a female firefighter – Li Meiyi (Tong Yao), Fan Weili’s wife – died in the fire. Li Meiyi’s younger brother, Li Jiefeng (Bai Yu), blamed Fan Weili at the time; but after 10 years Fan Weili says he owes no one any apologies. Fan Weili has a tense dinner with his daughter Fan Ailin (Xu Siyi) – who’s flying off next day, Sunday, to study abroad – his mother-in-law (Wu Yanshu) and his brother-in-law Li Jiefang, a senior firefighter. Meanwhile, in the huge Hongli recycling yard, in Queen’s Hill, northern New Territories, some immigrant workers find some luminescent chemicals in a container. On Sunday morning a typhoon is reported to be on its way from the Philippines. Firefighters are called out to deal with burning debris at the Hongli recycling yard, which is packed with containers holding who knows what. A massive series of explosions rocks the yard and even causes vehicles to crash on a nearby highway. When radiation is detected, Financial Secretary Wang Huiming (Mo Wenwei) – who is Acting Chief Executive while the Chief Executive (Jiang Dawei) is on an overseas trip – takes charge of the crisis. Fan Weili is told of events by the Chief Executive himself and appointed as a specialist consultant. Breaking protocol that he should go straight to the meeting called by Wang Huiming, Fan Weili goes to Hongli recycling yard, where he discovers there’s more than one radiation source. He informs Li Jiefeng, who is leading the team of firefighters, but the latter is dismissive. Meanwhile, two firefighters, Finger (Lin Jiaxi) and Water (He Qihua), who’ve been cut off from the main group, rescue an immigrant worker and his son amid more explosions. Four hours into the event, Fan Weili arrives at the government offices and meets Wang Huiming and the rest of the emergency committee. The bureaucrats are all wary of Fan Weili but Wang Huiming says he’s highly qualified and has experience of nuclear issues. Radium 226 has been detected, probably from fluorescent paint. When Fan Weili points out that a typhooon is due to hit Hong Kong in 18 hours, he adds that the quickest solution is to concrete over the radiation source; but he’s over-ruled by Wang Huiming and the other bureaucrats. Government helicopters drop borax on the yard and a team of firefighters approaches Finger and Water from the hill behind the yard. But the rescue operation is compromised when a helicopter crashes near the team, and radiation levels force a retreat. Six hours into the event, another radioactive substance is discovered in the yard – deadly Cesium 137, which could render the area uninhabitable for the next century. Once the typhoon arrives and spreads it, over 2 million people could be affected in Hong Kong. Wang Huiming insists the news about the radiation is kept quiet, to avoid mass panic. And Fan Weili ends up leading a small volunteer team of firefighters to find the Cesium 137.

REVIEW

Billed (on Hong Kong, not Mainland, posters) as “the first radiation disaster movie in the history of Hong Kong cinema” 香港史上首部辐射灾难钜制, Cesium Fallout 焚城 has little spare flesh despite its two-hour-plus running time and an almost documentary feel compared with other disaster movies. Liu Dehua 刘德华 [Andy Lau] turns in a convinced performance as a onetime-politician-turned-free-thinker who’s brought in to advise on the crisis and finds himself battling the territory’s bureaucratic mindset, nicely repped by Anglo-Chinese actress-singer Mo Wenwei 莫文蔚 [Karen Mok], 54, in her first movie in eight years. Taking triple duties as director, d.p. and co-writer, noted d.p. Pan Yaoming 潘耀明 [Anthony Pun] – whose prior work includes several big action movies by Chen Musheng 陈木胜 [Benny Chan] (Heroic Duo 双雄, 2003; Divergence 三岔口, 2005; Connected 保持通话, 2008; The White Storm 扫毒, 2013) – turns in a product that’s technically polished and not too overwhelmed by VFX but doesn’t reach down very far in either emotion or originality. Mainland box office was distinctly ho-hum (RMB259 million) considering the film’s blockbuster ambitions, while in Hong Kong it took only a so-so HK$43 million.

Though the film was financed largely by Mainland money, it was the brainchild of veteran Hong Kong producer Jiang Zhiqiang 江志强 [Bill Kong] of Edko Films, who in 2019 had read a report on how toxic waste was being transshipped through Hong Kong with little oversight by customs officials. The picture is the second solo directing stint by d.p. Pan following the retro-ish comedy-drama One More Chance 别叫我“赌神” (2023), starring Zhou Runfa [Chow Yun-fat]. Pan previously had a co-directing credit, with Mai Zhaohui 麦兆辉 [Alan Mak], on drugs drama Extraordinary Mission 非凡任务 (2017), which he also photographed. Several of the cast in Cesium were also in courtroom drama A Guilty Conscience 毒舌大状 (2023), on which Pan had been d.p.

It’s thanks to some of the performances, especially by Liu and Mo, that Cesium manages to scrape a 6/10, as the script, which took six people (including Pan) to write, is pretty bare-bones and hardly capitalises emotionally on all the relationships between the characters. (Lead writer is Mai Tianshu 麦天枢, whose career has been mostly in Hong Kong genre films, like Kung Fu Jungle 一个人的武林, 2014, and Warriors of Future 明日战记, 2022; second credited writer is Cen Junxi 岑君茜, who previously worked on two crime/action movies by Zheng Baorui 郑保瑞 [Soi Cheang].) In one of his more nuanced performances, Liu, 63, is the heart and soul of the movie, first as an ambitious politician who loosens up customs clearances to boost Hong Kong’s throughput volume and 10 years later as a repentant ex-pol who realises he helped the smuggling of toxic waste to East Asia and has already paid the price by the death of his wife, a firefighter, in a toxic-waste container fire a decade ago. Much of the human drama centres on Liu’s character, who no longer plays things by the book, battling the entrenched bureaucratic mindset of Hong Kong’s officials.

As well as having a teenage daughter who’s distant from him, Liu’s character also has a brother-in-law who’s now a senior firefighter and still hasn’t forgiven him for the death of his elder sister. Other characters, from bureaucrats to firemen, are also married or related – underlining the territory’s claustrophobic society – but these relationships are often unclearly drawn and hardly capitalised on dramatically. There’s a constant tension in the film between getting on with the disaster-movie plot and trying to draw involving characters: in the end, there’s not much personal baggage to weigh things down, and where there is some it’s fairly concise, except for a soggy section centred on Liu’s character and his family prior to the final act. In general Cesium has a tight, restless feel that’s almost documentary-like, were it not for characters dropping things in a very filmy way and “what if” VFX sequences showing what could have happened. Even a corruption subplot – with Chinese-American actor Wang Minde 王敏德 [Michael Wong] as the unrepentant business baddie – is raised and dismissed in six minutes flat.

Aside from Mo – who also turns in a nuanced performance as the Acting Chief Executive facing a crisis beyond her pay grade – other familiar faces supply solid support without providing much character depth: Xie Junhao 谢君豪 as a fire chief, Malaysian actress Liao Ziyu 廖子妤 as a naggy back-office wife, Lin Baoyi 林保怡 [Bowie Lam] as a fire department head and Zheng Zeshi 郑则仕 [Kent Cheng] as a government bureaucrat. Jiang Dawei 姜大卫 [David Chiang] pops up to resonant effect as the Chief Executive, but as the brother-in-law who still carries a grudge, young Mainland actor Bai Yu 白宇 (the son in Looking Up 银河补习班, 2019) is pretty colourless.

Action is well staged by Hong Kong veteran Huang Weiliang 黄伟亮 [Jack Wong] and visual effects are okay without breaking any new ground. Filming began in Hong Kong in Jan 2023, under the Chinese title 消防员 (literally, “Firefighters”). The final Chinese title simply means “Burning City”.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Alibaba Pictures (CN), Edko Films (HK), Beijing Alibaba Pictures Culture (CN), Edko (Beijing) Film Distribution (CN), China Film (CN), Beijing Fosun Films (CN). Produced by Edko Films (HK).

Script: Mai Tianshu, Cen Junxi, Wang Yingyao, Du Ruirong, Xin Ya, Pan Yaoming [Anthony Pun]. Photography: Pan Yaoming [Anthony Pun]. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai], Wu Wenni. Music: Liang Haoyi. Art direction: Li Jianwei. Styling: Wang Baoyi. Sound: Du Duzhi, Jiang Yizhen. Action: Huang Weiliang [Jack Wong]. Visual effects: Yang Wenjie, Chen Zitao, Yang Minjie.

Cast: Liu Dehua [Andy Lau] (Fan Weili/Simon), Bai Yu (Li Jiefeng/Kit, firefighter team leader), Mo Wenwei [Karen Mok] (Wang Huiming/Cecilia, Financial Secretary, Fang Mingkeng’s wife), Xie Junhao (Yanchan/Chainsmoker, fire chief), Wang Wanzhi (Wang Mingshi/Kelly, Wang Huiming’s assistant), Wang Danni (Chen Mei’en, senior fire-station officer), Liao Ziyu (Su Yi/Zoe, fire chief, Baoming’s wife), Lin Baoyi [Bowie Lam] (fire department head), Wang Minde [Michael Wong] (Gao Peide/Peter Cowen), Zhou Wenjian (Fang Mingkeng/Roger, Business Secretary, Wang Huiming’s husband), Zheng Zeshi [Kent Cheng] (Security Secretary), Huang Debin (Liu Zhaoqiang, fire district chief), He Qihua (Shui/Water, firefighter), Wei Junsheng (Xizhu/Thin Column, firefighter), Liang Zhongheng (Baoming, firefighter, Su Yi’s husband), Lin Jiaxi (Finger, firefighter), Huang Kaijie (Da B, firefighter), Wu Yanshu (Fan Weili’s mother-in-law), Tong Yao (Li Meiyi/May, Fan Weili’s wife, Li Jiefeng’s elder sister), Jiang Dawei [David Chiang] (Chief Executive), Xu Siyi (Fan Ailin/Eileen, Fan Weili’s daughter), Ou Jiawen (chief meteorologist), Guo Weliang (Eric, demolition expert), Zhang Daming (Rongji tea-stall owner), Bai Yaocan (hospital authority chairman), Zhang Dalun (Maxco, demolition expert), Zhang Songzhi (Food Hygiene Bureau chief).

Release: Hong Kong, 1 Nov 2024; China, 1 Nov 2024.