The White Storm 2: Drug Lords

扫毒2  天地对决

Hong Kong/China, 2019, colour, 2:35:1, 96 mins.

Director: Qiu Litao 邱礼涛 [Herman Yau].

Rating: 7/10.

Enjoyable, smartly paced, Hong Kong genre fare, with a reliable cast and standout car stunts.

STORY

Hong Kong, 2004. Yu Shuntian (Liu Dehua), a longtime member of the Zhengxing triad, sees his live-in girlfriend Chen Jingmei (Zhou Xiuna) walk out on him because of his constant drunkenness and abuse. Later he’s ordered by Zhengxing head Yu Nan (Zheng Zeshi) to administer punishment on his old friend and co-member Feng Zhengguo, aka Dizang (Gu Tianle), who’s broken Yu Nan’s key rule of no drug-dealing in the clubs he runs. Yu Shuntian chops off some of Dizang’s fingers and is then told to leave the triad himself. Yu Nan allows the Narcotics Bureau to raid Dizang’s clubs; during one operation, the wife (Wei Shiya) of Narcotics Bureau detective Lin Zhengfeng (Miao Qiaowei) is killed. In the years that follow, Yu Shuntian reinvents himself as a finance specialist while Dizang gets deeper into the heroin trade. Fifteen years later, Yu Shuntian is running a successful investment company along with his wife, Zou Wenfeng, a finance lawyer, and donates HK$200 million to an anti-drug fund in his name. Dizang has become a powerful drug lord masquerading as a pork importer, and the widowed Lin Zhengfeng sees his daughter Lin Hailan (Li Shang) successfully graduate from primary school. Out of the blue Yu Shuntian gets a letter from Chen Jingmei, who has terminal cancer, asking him to look after the son he never knew she had by him. Without telling his wife the real reason, Yu Shuntian flies to the Philippines, where his son, Chen Danni, a teenage junkie, falls to his death during a drugs raid by police. While Yu Shuntian is away, his wife learns she can never have children but keeps the news from her husband. Yu Shuntian now sets out on a secret crusade against Hong Kong’s drug lords, hacking into police files to discover the main perpetrators and causing chaos in the underworld. Eventually Yu Shuntian and Dizang meet face to face again, and at the funeral of Yu Nan, which both attend, Dizang raises the stakes by publicly disclosing Yu Shuntian’s past to the media.

REVIEW

Unrelated to The White Storm 扫毒 (2013) apart from the theme of drug-busting, and put together by a completely different team, The White Storm 2: Drug Lords 扫毒2  天地对决 is an equally enjoyable but basically standard Hong Kong action movie driven by a star cast, lots of shootouts and the usual male rivalry. Where the first film was a typical spectacle by director Chen Musheng 陈木胜 [Benny Chan], swinging from one location to another, Drug Lords is almost entirely set in Hong Kong and has a hard-driven, pulpier edge courtesy of super-prolific director Qiu Litao 邱礼涛 [Herman Yau] – in his third release so far this year – and his regular team of writer Li Min 李敏 [Erica Li], d.p. Chen Guanghong 陈广鸿 [Joe Chan], composer Mai Zhenhong 麦振鸿 [Brother Hung] and editor Zhong Weizhao 钟炜钊 [Azrael Chung]. It’s a notch up on Qiu’s last big action movie, bio-thriller The Leakers 泄密者们 (2018), and about on a par with the one before that, bomb-disposal thriller Shock Wave 拆弹专家 (2017), largely thanks to a crackerjack finale with a car chase through a metro station. Not yet released in Hong Jong, it’s enjoying vigorous business in the Mainland, with a hawl of RMB700 million in its first week. [Final tally was RMB1.3 billion, more than five times the 2013 film’s total of RMB238 million.]

Writer Li, a variable talent who’s worked on most of Qiu’s films during the past decade, re-teams here with Li Sheng 李昇, her co-scripter on Qiu’s The Leakers, The Sleep Curse 失眠 (2017) and, most notably, the excellent The Legend Is Born: Ip Man 叶问前传 (2010). The result is an unusually well-balanced screenplay – free of any explicit sermonising against drugs, and with no token Mainland characters – that follows through on its limited agenda without trying to over-reach itself: a simple story of modern-day rivalry between two former triad comrades, one of whom has reinvented himself as a successful investment manager, the other as a powerful drug lord. In star terms that means Liu Dehua 刘德华 [Andy Lau] vs Gu Tianle 古天乐 [Louis Koo], the first cool, composed and likeable in nice suits, the second sinister, glassy-eyed and sleazy with a moustache, goatee and mechanical fingers. Neither actor is stretched in any way, but their occasional face-offs are suitably charged and the pacing throughout is smart enough to gloss over the fact that the drama only reaches down so far. Another shootout, car crash or someone being thrown off a building is always just round the next corner.

The large supporting cast is busy and varied, led by the ever-reliable Miao Qiaowei 苗侨伟 as a widowed narcotics cop with a teenage daughter (played by writer Li’s real-life daughter, Li Shang 李赏, 16) and Taiwan Canadian actress Lin Jiaxin 林嘉欣 [Karena Lam] as the wife of Liu’s businessman. Miao etches a strong character without ever becoming a real third leg of the stool – which the script seems to want him to be – while Lin, as so often, is only partly believable in her role, here a finance lawyer with fertility problems. The more generic, smaller character roles are what really give the film its texture, from Taiwan-born Ying Cai’er 应采儿 [Cherrie Ying], 36 – who’s made too few films in recent years – almost unrecognisable as a female drug lord, to Zhang Guoqiang 张国强 as a loyal sidekick to Liu’s character. Qiu regulars like Zhou Xiuna 周秀娜 [Chrissie Chau] and Zheng Zeshi 郑则仕 [Kent Cheng] pop up briefly, as an ex-girlfriend and a triad head.

Action is fast and furious, especially the car stunts staged by Hong Kong maestro Wu Haitang 吴海堂 (The Leakers; Shock Wave) and capped by the final auto chase through an MTR station – actually a large, very realistic set that’s cleverly moved around to give a false impression of space. If this is what White Storm 2 will be largely remembered for, it’s not a bad legacy. The film’s Chinese title roughly means “Drug-Busting 2: Clash of Titans”. As before, the “white” in the English title refers to heroin, not snow.

CREDITS

Presented by Sil-Metropole Organisation (HK), Guangdong Sublime Media (CN), Universe Entertainment (HK).

Script: Li Min [Erica Li], Li Sheng, Qiu Litao [Herman Yau]. Photography: Chen Guanghong [Joe Chan]. Editing: Zhong Weizhao [Azrael Chung]. Music: Mai Zhenhong [Brother Hung]. Art direction: Wang Hui’en. Costume design: Mo Jiajia. Styling: Zhang Shijie [Stanley Cheung]. Action: Han Ping. Car stunts: Wu Haitang. Visual effects: Yu Guoliang, Ma Zhaofu, Liang Weimin, He Wenluo (Free-D Workshop).

Cast: Liu Dehua [Andy Lau] (Yu Shuntian), Gu Tianle [Louis Koo] (Feng Zhenguo/Dizang), Miao Qiaowei (Lin Zhengfeng, Narcotics Bureau captain), Lin Jiaxin [Karena Lam] (Zou Wenfeng), Zhang Guoqiang (Ming, Yu Shuntian’s sidekick), Chen Jiale (Ji, Narcotics Bureau detective), Wei Shiya (Apple, Narcotics Bureau detective), Gong Shuoliang (Cao Tai, drug lord), Ouyang Jing (Cao Ping, drug lord), Zheng Zeshi [Kent Cheng] (Yu Nan, Zhengxing triad head), Lin Jiadong [Gordon Lam] (Justice Department head), Zhou Xiuna [Chrissie Chau] (Chen Jingmei, Yu Shuntian’s ex-girlfriend), Ying Cai’er [Cherrie Ying] (Ca, drug lord), Li Shang (Lin Hailan, Lin Zhengfeng’s daughter), Zhang Junjie (Dicky, Dizang’s assistant), Li Canchen [Sam Lee] (druggie gangster), Jiang Meiyi (Qing, policewoman, Lin Zhengfeng’s wife), Ou Ruiwei (Chang, Yu Shuntian’s sidekick).

Release: Hong Kong, 16 Jul 2019; China, 5 Jul 2019.