Against All Odds
营救飞虎
China, 2025, colour, 2.35:1, 106 mins.
Director: Liu Haoliang 刘浩良.
Rating: 7/10.
Well-played, tightly constructed WW2 action movie, set in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, ticks all the 80th-anni boxes without becoming didactic.
STORY
Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, early 1944. Smiley (Han Geng), who arrived from Shanghai in early 1943, manages a bowling alley on Lockhart Road in Wanzai [Wan Chai] and has also been appointed by the Japanese as the representative for the city’s Higashi [Eastern] ward. Seemingly a collaborator, he is in fact a member of the Communist underground, and is ordered to kill Lt. Ichijo (Arai Soji) before the latter is transferred to the Philippines and his successor arrives from Shanghai. Smiley plans to do it at the bowling alley, which Ichijo likes to visit. Meanwhile, three teams of planes take off from a US airforce base in Guilin, China, to bomb a shipyard in Hong Kong, a major supply hub for the Pacific War. During the raid one team mistakenly bombs some housing in Hongkan [Hung Hom], Kowloon, causing many civilian casualties. One pilot, Lt. James J. Harnett (Mitchell Hoog), bails out and is captured in the sea by the Japanese. A separate underground group, the Hong Kong-Kowloon brigade of the Dongjiang [East River] Guerrilla Column, plans to rescue him when he’s paraded for the press at the bowling alley that night – the same night that Ichijo, not happy at being transferred from Hong Kong, arrives for a final bowling session. As the US pilot is wheeled in in a cage and publically humiliated, Ichijo’s successor, Col. Arima (Mori Hiroyuki), arrives and steals the show. He insists on getting to know Smiley, whom he suspects may be the one who escaped his raid on a Communist-run brewery in Shanghai two years ago. Suddenly the lights go out, and chaos ensues as Smiley’s group and the underground group – unbeknown to each other – go about their separate missions. Ichijo dies but Arima survives, and all the Chinese escape with the US pilot on Smiley’s boat in Victoria harbour. Smiley bluffs their way past a Japanese patrol boat and they land in Hongkan, still smoking from the botched US air raid. They make for the hills, where Smiley and the underground group of four – calm leader Dan (Wu Yunlong), emotional Gutsy (Chen Yongsheng), cool Sister 3 (Wang Danni) and nine-year-old Mimi (Han Mo) – form an uneasy alliance, with Smiley joining their mission to deliver the US pilot to a pick-up point by a sea cave. Meanwhile, Arima has two days to find the US pilot before a senior Japanese commander, Lord Isogai, arrives. And then the US pilot and Smiley persuade the underground group to make a diversion to retrieve a crashed US plane’s gun camera, which photographed a Japanese radar station on Lion Rock.
REVIEW
Compared with other Mainland films released this year to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2, Against All Odds 营救飞虎 is the closest to a traditional, action-oriented war movie. Creatively produced 监制 by veteran Mainland film-maker Huang Jianxin 黄建新, it’s actually directed and lead scripted by Liu Haoliang 刘浩良, a Hong Kong writer with over 20 years up-and-down commercial experience (sometimes with Mainlander Mai Tianshu 麦天枢, most notably on Three 三人行, 2016). During the past decade he’s also occasionally directed (crime comedy Two Thumbs Up 冲锋车, 2015; China-set crime drama Caught in Time 除暴, 2020, a box-office success), and here proves he can put together a well-played, tightly constructed action movie while also ticking necessary boxes like sadistic Japanese villains and the heroic role of the CPC. Maybe because of its unstarry cast – among whom the only big name, actor-singer Han Geng 韩庚, is not associated with action movies – it took only a puny RMB31 million on release this autumn.
Like other 80th-anni war movies Dongji Rescue 东极岛 (2025) and mega-hit Dead to Rights 南京照相馆 (2025), Odds is also lightly fact-based – specifically the rescue by the Hong Kong-Kowloon brigade of the Dongjiang [East River] Guerrilla Column of a downed US airforce lieutenant, James J. Harnett, from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong in 1944. Downed during a messy air raid on a shipyard, the young American is saved from public humiliation by the Japanese authorities and spirited away on the boat of an apparent collaborator who turns out to be a Communist underground agent who was at the same place on a separate mission. Without getting into any political discussions, the film neatly sketches the initial mutual suspicion between the US pilot’s various rescuers, as well as the American’s own feelings that he hardly deserves to be rescued after mistakenly bombing some civilian buildings.
Relations between the group of six gradually improve in a natural way, through action rather than hugging, as they’re pursued by a vengeful Japanese who has a past history with the apparent collaborator. The film cleverly taps into war-movie cliches – the Japanese villain has a shoe fetish, the hardest of the Chinese rescuers is actually a bit of a softie, and so on – while also making the main characters not too stereotypical. Also, Liu and his key (mostly Hong Kong) crew pivot the film on two terrific action sequences that each run for around 15 minutes – the first in a (period) Hong Kong bowling alley and the second a night attack on a remote sentry post. Totalling half-an-hour in a film that runs only 1¾ hours, that’s a major distraction for any viewer, not counting plenty of other action in the film.
Sporting long hair and tolerant looks, Han, 41, is relatively low-key as the apparent collaborator, while young American actor-model Mitchell Hoog (TV high-school series Saved by the Bell, 2020-21) doesn’t leave much of a footprint as the non-Chinese-speaking pilot. More memorable are young Mainland actor Chen Yongsheng 陈永胜 (Snipers 狙击手, 2022) as the tough young guerrilla, Shandong-born Wang Danni 王丹妮 (Anita 梅艳芳, 2021; A Guilty Conscience 毒舌大状, 2023) as the all-business, shaven-headed female guerrilla, and Hong Kong martial-arts veteran Wu Yunlong 吴云龙 [Philip Ng] as the guerrilla group’s thoughtful leader. As the Japanese villain, Mori Hiroyuki 森博之 (Railway Heroes 铁道英雄, 2021; Hidden Blade 无名, 2023) is effective as always.
The period setting is believably created by Hong Kong production designer Lin Ziqiao 林子侨 (The Last Tycoon 大上海, 2012) and his team, and the action nicely staged by his compatriot Wu Yonglun 吴永伦 (The Climbers 攀登者, 2019) – all caught in unshowy widescreen by Mainland d.p. Gao Hu (I Love You 我要和你在一起, 2022; Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants 射雕英雄传 侠之大者, 2025). The whole package also benefits from a full, symphonic score that – unusually, nowadays – is not just repetitve synths wallpaper.
The actual events are referenced by b&w photos at the end. Entirely financed by Mainland money, the film was shot in Shenzhen and Huizhou, just across the border from Hong Kong. Its Chinese title, literally “Rescuing a Flying Tiger”, is as generic as the English one.
CREDITS
Presented by Huaxia Film Distribution (CN), Pearl River Film Group (CN), Shenzhen Film Studio (CN), China Intercontinental Communication Centre (CN), Shanghai Dimension Films (CN). Produced by Xiangshan 1944 Film Production (CN), Beijing Guozun Cathay Associates (CN).
Script: Liu Haoliang, Zhang Yanqi, Tan Yuan, Ling Weijun, Hong Kong & Kowloon Screenwriters Guerrilla Team. Script advice: Zhang Ji, Dong Zhe, Su Sixing. Photography: Gao Hu. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai]. Music: Lin Junhui, Chen Yubin, Wu Xintu. Production design: Lin Ziqiao. Art direction: Zheng Wanting. Costumes: Ren Zhitao. Styling: Mai Linlin. Sound: Lai Zailiang, James Ashton. Action: Wu Yonglun. Visual effects: Wang Lei (Beijing Arts Marvel Culture & Media). Executive direction: He Yaoliang.
Cast: Han Geng (Huanshao/Smiley), Mitchell Hoog (James J. Harnett, US lieutenant), Chen Yongsheng (Shadanzai/Gutsy), Wang Danni (Sanjiajie/Sister 3), Han Mo (Xiami/Mimi), Wu Yunlong [Philip Ng] (Dandao/Dan), Mori Hiroyuki (Arima, Japanese colonel), Joey Iwanaga (Igarashi, Japanese pilot), Arai Soji (Ichijo, Japanese lieutenant), Zheng Xiaoning (Zhou), Tom Fenton (Ryan).
Release: China, 3 Sep 2025.