S.M.A.R.T. Chase
极致追击
China, 2017, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D, 93 mins.
Director: Charles Martin.
Rating: 4/10.
Lamely written, English-language action thriller set in Shanghai has no tension or personal drama.
STORY
Shanghai, the present day. Security firm SMART (Security Management Action Recovery Team), run by Englishman Danny Stratton (Orlando Bloom) and his Asian colleagues Ren Mahe (Ren Dahua) and An Jiejie (Kun Ling), gets the job of transporting a valuable Van Gogh painting. However, the security van is blown up and the painting is stolen. A year later, Danny Stratton is still personally and professionally broken, and his relationship with girlfriend Mo Ling (Xiong Dailin) is on the rocks. He’s finally offered another job, by museum director Song (Ying Da), to transport the rare Zodiac Vase, worth US$36 million, to London. On the way to Pudong airport the team is ambushed by a motorcycle gang; Danny Stratton retrieves the vase but recognises one gang member (Shi Yanneng) as the man who stole the Van Gogh. Determined to recover the painting and clear his name – Shanghai police detective Dai (Chang Rong) still thinks he actually stole it – Danny Stratton plans to contact the gangsters, offering to sell the vase for US$6 million and thus lead the police to them. From a mobile phone retrieved from one of the gang, Danny Stratton discovers that Tara Yan (Liang Jing), a mysterious rich woman who’d come on to him at an art exhibition, is behind the gang. With the help of new SMART recruit Tang Dingdang (Wu Lei), a young techie with a drone, Danny Stratton and his team set the trap; but Tang Dingdang, who’s been distracted by a girl (Wang Ruoxi) he wants to impress, arrives too late and the gang makes off with the vase. Thanks to a tracker inside the case, Tang Dingdang follows the vase to a mansion in Fuzhou Road owned by Tara Yan, and the SMART team manages to retrieve both the vase and the painting. But then Danny Stratton realises that Tara Yan is part of a bigger conspiracy and that Mo Ling is in danger.
REVIEW
UK actor Orlando Bloom, 41, as an action tough guy with a blond rinse isn’t the only problem with S.M.A.R.T. Chase 极致追击, a Shanghai-set crime thriller, shot mostly in English, that’s pure pulp but is directed with no feel for the genre or with any kind of tension or personal drama. Mainland-funded and with a majority Mainland cast, it marks the feature-film debut of London-born TV director Charles Martin (Skins, 2008-13; a Wallander episode, 2012; Marcella, 2016-18), who fails to give the film either a suitably big or a suitably trashy feel, despite some stunning aerial vistas of the city, a good street-level feel by d.p. Philipp Blaubach (The Escapist, 2008; The Disappearance of Alice Creed, 2009), and a cast comprising some individually talented names. Released in the Mainland in a 3-D conversion, it crashed with a puny RMB17.5 million.
Apart from Bloom’s customary lack of leading-man presence – despite handling his action scenes okay – one insuperable problem is the utterly routine script by the US’ Kevin Bernhardt, who’s mostly written direct-to-video action fare and has the whole cast (including Bloom) speaking in American gung-ho cliches. Attempts at lightness and humour come across as forced, largely thanks to a lack of any ensemble chemistry as everyone acts in their own space. Hong Kong veteran Ren Dahua 任达华 [Simon Yam] punches the clock as the business partner of Bloom’s character, while partly-Chinese Taiwan actress Kun Ling 昆凌 [Hannah Quinlivan], who’s best known as the wife of actor-singer Zhou Jielun 周杰伦 [Jay Chou], hangs around as a spunky/punky member of the team.
Teenage TV star Wu Lei 吴磊, an actual Shanghaier, has the most animated and natural role as the team’s techie but is saddled with a silly subplot of his shyness with a local girl. With Mainland-born, Hong Kong-based Xiong Dailin 熊黛林, 37, in a purely decorative role as the kind-of-girlfriend of Bloom’s character, it’s left to offbeat Mainland actress Liang Jing 梁静, 45, to add a bit of oomph as the token villainess. Equipped with Fu Manchu-like finger extensions, a pudding-basin haircut and some truly awful dialogue about “the illusion of love”, Liang tries to ham it up but is left stranded by the rest of the cast and Martin’s uninflected direction.
The best action sequence comes at the 25-minute mark, with several pursuits by car and foot through Shanghai that are well cut and staged. Nothing else equals this 17-minute section, and the film lacks a proper action finale, adding to the film’s overall feeling of smallness. In the UK, where it was released only on ancillary, the English title was changed to The Shanghai Job. The Chinese title means “Ultimate Pursuit”. What the acronym SMART stands for is never actually explained in the script, along with any background on Bloom’s character and his partners. Dialogue is roughly 80% in English.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Bliss Cultural Communication (CN), Khorgos Bliss Cultural Communication (CN). Produced by Bliss Media (CN).
Script: Kevin Bernhardt. Original story: Terence M. O’Keefe, Robby Henson. Photography: Philipp Blaubach. Aerial photography: Feng Yi, Diao Kaikai. Editor: James Hughes. Music: Mark Kilian. Music direction: Susan Jacobs. Art direction: Ying Zi. Sound: Huang Xun, Kami Asgar, Mark Larry. Action: Carl Stück (Production Concept). Martial arts: Tomer Oz. Visual effects: Sebastian Baker (Automatik Visual Effects). 3-D: Li Zhaohua, Hong Yangxuan.
Cast: Orlando Bloom (Danny Stratton), Wu Lei (Tang Dingdang/Ding Dong), Ren Dahua [Simon Yam] (Ren Mahe/Mach), Kun Ling [Hannah Quinlivan] (An Jiejie/J.Jae), Xiong Dailin (Mo Ling), Liang Jing (Tara Yan), Ying Da (Song), Shi Yanneng (Long Fei), Chang Rong (Dai, police detective), Bai Zixuan [Tom Price] (Ximu/Ciem), Wang Ruoxi (Na’na), Zhang Wenjun (Muzi/MZee), Yi Zhengfu (Song’s assistant), Zhang Xiyuan (Mo Ling’s colleague), Huang Guansong (vase authenticator), Xu Zongzhe (thumbless gangster).
Release: China, 30 Sep 2017.