Formed Police Unit
维和防暴队
China, 2024, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 100 mins.
Director: Li Dachao 李达超.
Rating: 6/10.
Mainland flag-waver, with Chinese Blue Helmets keeping the peace in Africa, is pretty much solid action, well-staged and punchy.
STORY
Santa Leonne, a French-speaking republic somewhere on the coast of Africa, Feb 2018. Anti-government riots, led by Amir, have broken out in the country; Amir has been arrested but the chaos continues, with massacres in villages, including Fabur. The government appeals to the UN, which asks China to send a peace-keeping unit – officially known as a Formed Police Unit – to assist the local police in keeping public order. Before the unit leaves China, its Alpha Team, commanded by Yu Weidong (Huang Jingyu), is joined by sniper Yang Zhen (Wang Yibo), a border guard from Ningguang, who bears Yu Weidong a long-held personal grudge. In Tullar city, Amir is put on trial for genocide and pleads innocence to foreign reporters outside the courthouse. Meanwhile, the Chinese FPU arrives and goes to its special high-tech quarters. It is ordered by Fabio Thomas (Thomas Fiquet), head of the UN mission in Santa Leonne, to assist the police in patrolling Manaf Square; but the situation is tense, especially against foreign countries seen to be interfering in local affairs, and in the square chaos breaks out when a boy, Lucas (Nwachukwu Kennedy Chukwuebuka), appeals for help to the Chinese unit but ends up shot dead. The Chinese are blamed for the incident. The sniper escapes but is shot in the finger by Yang Zhen beforehand. Yang Zhen is later carpeted by Yu Weidong for breaking ranks. Thd dead boy had a tattoo on his arm identifying him as a resident of Fabur village. The FPU rebuilds its damaged relations with the local population by helping to build homes for refugees and providing food and education. To build its genocide case against Amir, the government plans to bring witnesses from Fabur village to testify against him. In prison, Amir tells Blake (Kevin Lee), a British mercenary who works for him, to do something to stop it. He also tells a local supporter, Quaka, to get him out of prison. Quaka kidnaps a senator, Leroy, and three foreign TV reporters and demands Amir’s immediate release. Yu Weidong offers to take his team in. The operation is violent and messy but the Chinese FPU succeeds in rescuing the hostages. Afterwards there is an official UN investigation, which the FPU survives. However, the Chinese realise they still have a lot of work to do to be accepted by the locals. The FPU is then assigned the job of transporting the Fabur witnesses safely to Tullar city to testify against Amir. And on top of everything, a typhoon is approaching the country.
REVIEW
Supposedly based on true events in Sierra Leone 20 years ago, Formed Police Unit 维和防暴队 is an action flag-waver centred on a Chinese peace-keeping force despatched to the French-speaking republic of “Santa Leonne”on the coast of Africa. Funded by and entirely shot in the Mainland, with an all-Mainland cast, it has two Hong Kong veterans at the helm – Liu Weiqiang 刘伟强 [Andrew Lau] as creative producer 监制 and action veteran Li Dachao 李达超 as director – plus key crew who are also mostly Hong Kongers. Shot three years ago (see below), it’s a by-the-numbers action movie showing China as a global peace-keeper (under the UN flag) whose combatants finally overcome local resistance to foreigners interfering in African affairs.
There’s little individual characterisation, and the dialogue is no better than functional; but none of that matters as some 80% of the film is pure action, which is very well mounted and has a strong visceral quality. All in all it’s much better than Peacekeeping Force 中国蓝盔, the first movie centred on China’s UN troops that flopped back in 2018, but nowhere near Wolf Warrior II 战狼II (2017), which also projected China as a force for good in Africa beyond being a UN peacekeeper. Formed Police Unit took a nice but not spectacular RMB511 million over the May Day holiday.
The rather unsexy English title is the official UN name for police units sent to assist local police in maintaining public order – though here they effectively act like soldiers, especially in the film’s final half-hour which is entirely devoted to all-out, big-bang action, capped by the arrival of a hurricane for good measure. (The film’s Chinese title isn’t any sexier, literally “Peace-Keeping Anti-Riot Team”.) As well as getting “director” credit, Li also gets a separate one as “action director”, a role he’s taken on other Liu productions, the Wuhan-set Covid drama Chinese Doctors 中国医生 (2021), crackerjack aeroplane thriller The Captain 中国机长 (2019), firefighter drama The Bravest 烈火英雄 (2019) and costume action-drama The Guillotines 血滴子 (2012). Li started in heavy/stunt roles during the 1990s and has a string of action credits on Hong Kong movies during the past two decades.
With Liu prominently credited as creative producer, it remains a moot point how much of the non-action material he may have shot; but ultimately it’s unimportant in what is a totally action-driven, by-the-numbers flag-waver. The screenplay, lead written by Wu Mengzhang 吴孟璋 (the Renny Harlin-directed action-drama Bodies at Rest 沉默的证人, 2019, plus several films with the Peng 彭 [Pang] brothers), simply goes from one setpiece to another, with little narrative structure or character downtime. The male actors are largely indistinguishable from each other, especially when kitted out in blue helmets and running around, with only Huang Jingyu 黄景瑜 as a stern-jawed team leader and Wang Yibo 王一博 as the group’s grudge-filled sniper cutting any kind of personality, while the film’s token female role, played by the usually interesting Zhong Chuxi 钟楚曦 (Wild Grass 荞麦疯长, 2020), has her speaking incomprehensible French as an interpreter/liaison officer. The film’s only real surprise is the death of a couple of leading characters.
Luckily, the action is fine, dustily shot (by Hong Kong d.p. Feng Yuanwen 冯远文 [Edmond Fung], Chinese Doctors) and punchily edited (by fellow Hong Konger Huang Hai 黄海, ditto). Music by Mainlander A Kun 阿鲲 is simply electronic wallpaper but it hardly matters amid all the noise. Most of the film was shot in 67 days, from late Feb to early May 2021, in Beihai, on the coast of Guangxi province, southern China, where the set of “Santa Leonne” was built. However, in August that year the production announced that actor-singer Zhang Zhehan 张哲瀚, who had played the role of squad leader Zhou Jiaxuan, was no longer associated with the film, following a netizen firestorm over pictures of him taken at two shrines in Japan a couple of years earlier; his scenes were re-shot, with Ou Hao 欧豪 taking over the role. Re-shooting wrapped in Oct 2021.
CREDITS
Presented by Zhongzhong (Beijing) Pictures (CN), Jiecheng Century Cultural Industry Group (CN), Wanda Pictures (Horgos) (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), Zhejiang Dongyang Wencai Culture Communication (CN), Horgos Dangdai Shiguang Culture Media (CN).
Script: Wu Mengzhang, CarrieAnn Lee. Script supervision: Li Hui. Photography: Feng Yuanwen [Edmond Fung]. Editing: Huang Hai. Music: A Kun. Art direction: Zhong Yifeng. Styling: You Ying. Sound: Yao Junxuan. Action direction: Li Dachao. Action: Xia Xiaolong, Chen Junzhi, He Xiaogang. Visual effects: Huang Hongda, Xie Yiwen, He Zhongning.
Cast: Huang Jingyu (Yu Weidong, team leader), Wang Yibo (Yang Zhen, team sniper), Zhong Chuxi (Ding Hui, team liaison officer), Ou Hao (Zhou Jiaxuan, squad leader), Zhu Yawen (Yang Chen, Yang Zhen’s father), Gu Jiacheng (Jiang Xiaoyang), Zhao Huawei (Du Yifan), Alazi Soumaila Rawdoth (mother of Lucas and Selina), Yin Xiaotian (Yan Zhengming, FPU political officer), Feng Wenjuan (Qin, Yu Weidong’s wife), Thomas Fiquet (Fabio Thomas, Santa Leonne mission head), Ling Chen (Xiaohu, Yu Weidong’s young son), Wang Hongli (young Yang Zhen), Shaune Diop (John), Nwachukwu Kennedy Chukwuebuka (Lucas), Kevin Lee (Blake), Stuart Forbes (UK journalist), Dmitry Antonov (UN officer).
Release: China, 1 May 2024.