Line Walker 2

使徒行者2  谍影行动

Hong Kong/China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 97 mins.

Director: Wen Weihong 文伟鸿 [Jazz Boon].

Rating: 8/10.

Turbo-charged, often insane slice of Hong Kong crime-action is a notch above the first film, with the same star trio and overall packaging even better.

STORY

Hong Kong, 2019. A car ploughs into pedestrians in Central district, killing five and wounding 18; the driver, millionaire company chairman Miao Guoneng, then slits his throat. It is the second mysterious event, following a similar incident in Dabu [Tai Po] in the New Territories. One night soon afterwards, freelance journalist Yao Keyi (Jiang Peiyao) is speaking to her colleague Bill (Liu Yuning) who’s in Burma on some affair they’re working on. She finds herself hunted by a killer, who pursues her onto a bus; but she’s unexpectedly rescued by Cheng Tao (Zhang Jiahui), a onetime undercover agent who’s now a chief inspector for the counter-terrorism branch of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, and his colleague and pal Ye Zhifan (Wu Zhenyu), a superintendent. They take her in for questioning, already knowing she’s an IT specialist and malicious hacker who’s been forced to work for the US’ National Security Agency. She eventually admits that she and Bill, while researching an article on human trafficking, came across some data that predicted the Taipo and Central events, as well as material about an underground group that abducts children and gradually trains them to become hackers and agents that infiltrate police forces around the globe. In the middle of the interrogation, Jing Jinxian (Gu Tianle), a superintendent in the Crime & Security department, arrives and tries to take over the case. Ye Zhifan and Cheng Tao are suspicious of his motives and temporarily prevent him; but finally the Commissioner of Police (Ma Dezhong), suspecting a high-level mole in the Hong Kong police force, decides to put all three on the case, and Yao Keyi is put in a safe house. Jing Jinxian and Cheng Tao go to Myanmar to retrieve Yao Keyi’s data file from Bill; but as the SWAT squad raids the building, an explosion kills Bill and a man escapes with his computer’s hard disk. Jing Jinxian retrieves it but, in a ferocious gun battle in the street, he is wounded. Cheng Tao, for personal reasons, helps to save him but afterwards the hard disk is found to be empty. Meanwhile, Cheng Tao, who last had possession of the hard disk, has disappeared. Back in Hong Kong the Commissioner of Police is now convinced the force has a high-level mole, as only 15 people knew about the Myanmar operation. But Ye Zhifan still vouches for his pal Cheng Tao’s probity.

REVIEW

“No Spanish bulls were harmed in the making of this picture” is the only thing missing from Line Walker 2 使徒行者2  谍影行动, a turbo-charged, often insane slice of Hong Kong crime-action that shows the territory’s genre machine still has some life left in it. Where Line Walker: The Movie 使徒行者 (2016), was a more than decent spin-off, with a new cast, of TVB’s megahit 2014 drama series, LW2 reunites the same three stars but blazes its own trail with a brand new storyline whose only connection with the TV series is the Line Walker title and the theme of undercover moles. Put together by most of the same team – including director Wen Weihong 文伟鸿 [Jazz Boon], a longtime TVB employee who’s really found his feet here in his second big-screen outing – it’s an edgily shot, punchily choreographed and often surreally edited star vehicle that builds on the first film’s theme of comradely loyalty and again serves up a finale with strong echoes of the “heroic bloodshed” movies of Wu Yusen 吴宇森 [John Woo]. In three weeks it’s already surpassed the RMB606 million Mainland total of the first film, and looks to edge close to RMB700 by the end of its run. [Final tally was RMB699 million.]

Where LWTM carried on the theme of the 2014 TV series by focusing on the identity of an undercover cop whose real name had been deliberately “erased” by his late handler, LW2 comes straight out of the box with a completely new storyline and new characters played by the same star trio of Zhang Jiahui 张家辉 [Nick Cheung], Gu Tianle 古天乐 [Louis Koo] and Wu Zhenyu 吴镇宇 [Francis Ng], as three members of Hong Kong’s Criminal Intelligence Bureau charged with exposing a network of moles who could be themselves. Said moles were kidnapped as children by a mysterious human-trafficking group and later implanted as undercover hackers in police forces worldwide. Believe that and you’re already half onboard for the screenplay by returning Hong Kong writer Guan Haoyue 关皓月, who started her film career by writing two romantic dramas for Taiwan actress-director Zhang Aijia 张艾嘉 [Sylvia Chang] (Tempting Heart 心动, 1999; 20 30 40, 2004) before switching to TVDs in a variety of genres.

Despite the loony basic plot, and the terrifically mounted action sequences that define the film, Guan’s script, as in LWTM, tries to steer things away from being just a police procedural by focusing on the relationships between the three leads. Again, it’s the scenes between Zhang, Gu and Wu that give the movie some substance: three practised Hong Kong veterans, now comfortably into middle age, whose careers sum up so much of the territory’s cinema. The quiet ease between the trio – even when facing off against each other – is entertaining in itself, and even Gu’s customarily wooden looks are justified this time by his role as an enigmatic intelligence agent. But Guan also provides the three stars with several opportunities to shine dramatically: an interrogation scene that Gu’s agent (in hilarious dark glasses) tries to gatecrash, a tense chat round a seedy restaurant table, and scenes in CIB’s steely cool HQ. Though the story focuses, again, more on Zhang and Gu’s characters than Wu’s, the last is a defining moderator in the story.

Though she expertly keeps the sands of suspicion gently shifting, Guan’s script is sometimes too plot heavy for its own good, with multiple flashbacks and stories within stories like a Top Top Top Secret unit within the Hong Kong police with the unlikely name Invisible Frontline Force. The action setpieces, supervised again by veteran Qian Jiale 钱嘉乐 [Chin Ka-lok], come as a relief from all the claustrophobic suspicion and meaningful looks, and, like the main plot itself, show a suitable disregard for believability. A fight and rescue on a Hong Kong bus, a shootout in a Myanmar street and – of course – the grand finale of a car chase during the Pamplona bull run in Spain parallel all the electronic hardware and banks of flashing computer screens that we’re led to believe power Hong Kong’s police force. The trick of Wen, and veteran editor Zhong Weizhao 钟炜钊 [Azrael Chung], is that the viewer is never given time to question what is going on.

Beyond the star trio, other roles are smallish, apart from up-and-coming Mainland actress Jiang Peiyao 姜珮瑶, 25, assured in her early scenes as a hacker/journalist opposite Zhang and Wu, plus TVB veteran Ma Dezhong 马德钟 as the police commissioner. Mainland-born actress Cai Jie 蔡洁 (the killer’s previous girlfriend in Port of Call 踏血寻梅, 2015; the street whore in Paradox 杀破狼  贪狼, 2017) is briefly resonant as the wife of Gu’s character. Boyish-faced Mainlander Zhang Yichi 张亦驰 has some considerable fun in the latter stages as a leering killing machine.

The typically gritty, noirish photography by team newcomers Guan Zhiyao 关智耀 [Jason Kwan] and Guo Zhenming 郭振明, who both worked together on the recent Chasing the Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch 追龙II  贼王 (2019), is a major asset in sustaining the film’s atmosphere. Unfortunately, it isn’t matched by the score from returning Japanese American Hatano Yusuke 波多野裕介, augmented by young German composer Timo Jaeger. The film’s Chinese title literally means “Fellow Travellers: Operation Spy Shadows”. Needless to say, the film has no connection at all with Line Walker: The Prelude 使徒行者2 (2017), the follow-up to the original TV series that featured the same star, Miao Qiaowei 苗侨伟, but was directed by Su Wancong 苏万聪 and Su Jiamin 苏嘉敏, not Wen.

CREDITS

Presented by Shaw Brothers Pictures International (HK), JQ Pictures (CN), One Cool Film Production (HK), Television Broadcasts (HK), Big Honor Entertainment (HK). Produced by Shaw Brothers Pictures (HK).

Script: Guan Haoyue. Photography: Guan Zhiyao [Jason Kwan], Guo Zhenming. Editing: Zhong Weizhao [Azrael Chung]. Music: Hatano Yusuke, Timo Jaeger. Production design: Xi Zhongwen [Yee Chung-man]. Art direction: Cai Huiyan. Styling: Ouyang Xia [Connie Auyeung]. Action: Qian Jiale [Chin Ka-lok], Huang Weihui, Deng Ruihua. Car stunts: Wu Haitang.

Cast: Zhang Jiahui [Nick Cheung] (Cheng Tao/Dee, CIB chief inspector), Gu Tianle [Louis Koo] (Jing Jinxian, Crime & Security Department superintendent), Wu Zhenyu [Francis Ng] (Ye Zhifan, CIB superintendent), Jiang Peiyao (Yao Keyi), Zhang Yichi (Demon, young killer), Liu Yuning (Bill), Huang Zhizhong (Dong), Ma Dezhong (police commissioner), Yuan Weihao (Zhuang), Cai Jie (Emma, Jing Jinxian’s wife), Chen Shancong (chief superintendent), Wang Junxin, Zhang Bao’er, Jiang Jiamin, Ou Ruiwei, Zheng Qitai, Huang Xiangxing, Xu Rong, Lin Wei, Wu Ruiting, Wei Zhihao, Li Zhenye, Ruan Er, Guan Wanshan, Li Zhongxi, Liu Chutian.

Release: Hong Kong, 8 Aug 2019; China, 7 Aug 2019.