Plot summary (story synopsis): Hong Kong policeman Cheung (Andy Lau) worked undercover and put away some of the members of a bank robbery gang. Bank robber Hung (Jiang Wu) managed to escape but his brother ended up in jail. A few years later, Hung returns to Hong Kong with a band of mercenaries. He takes control of one of Hong Kong's undersea traffic tunnels, together with hundreds of trapped motorists as hostages, and threatens to blow up the tunnel unless his brother is released and ransom is paid.
***
Shock Wave is an above-average Hong Kong action thriller. Too many Hong Kong movies have cliched and unbelievable plots, and unnatural forced character development.
Some thought has gone into each of Shock Wave's many action sequences, so it's not just bland by-the-numbers action tropes. There are interesting details. Pacing and editing are especially good, almost Roland Emmerich slick. The scenes don't feel too drawn out or full of filler.
The first third or so of the movie establishes the characters and their backgrounds, before the long tunnel siege starts. We see Cheung fall in love with Carmen (Song Jia), and defuse an old war bomb. Hung also toys with Cheung with a small bomb.
The whole tunnel setting (I'm guessing they used a real location) looks large and feels authentic, giving the movie a blockbuster feel (on a US$23 million budget). But the siege itself isn't 100 percent believable. If you're the mastermind, you don't need to place yourself in danger, in the middle of the siege. You can run the operation remotely. Anyway, it is believable enough.
The movie was made with the cooperation of Hong Kong's bomb squad, so the technicalities are detailed and convincing. For example, Cheung drills into the fuse of the old war bomb and neutralizes it with some liquid chemical (could be made up but it looks real). Cheung declines to wear a bomb suit for this operation as the bomb is so large that a bomb suit wouldn't offer any protection - nicely foreshadowing the power and danger of the bombs in the tunnel.
However some liberties were taken for dramatic purposes (splitting the explosives into two bombs reduces the blast damage to the tunnel, it doesn't increase the damage) but most viewers won't notice. Carmen and the grenade? You could wrap tape around the grenade's spoon (lever) without wrapping it round her hand, allowing her to safely drop the grenade.
Less convincing but still effective is Hung's relationship with Carmen. Their breakup in the kitchen seems to come out of nowhere. However the two characters are well established and believable, lending emotional weight when Cheung is in danger.
Overall, the movie works. Pacing is good, characters are sympathetic, plot is mainly believable. Too few Hong Kong movies pass this bar.
Side note: Cheung uses a Leatherman OHT multitool a few times, not the Leatherman EOD MUT which is designed for bomb squad use.
Showing posts with label thriller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thriller. Show all posts
2017-04-27
2015-03-12
Run All Night (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) is a drunk has-been mob killer who is estranged from his son Mike (Joel Kinnaman). Mob boss Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris) is Jimmy's boss and childhood friend.
Shawn's no-good son Danny (Boyd Holbrook) gets into trouble and Mike witnesses him killing a man. Danny tries to kill Mike, and Jimmy kills Danny to protect his son.
Shawn swears revenge on Jimmy and Mike. He sets his whole gang on them, including ace hired gun Price (rapper Common), and frames them for multiple murders. The entire New York police force is now after them, including Jimmy's old nemesis, detective Harding (Vincent D'Onofrio, looking more and more like Brian Dennehy).
***
Run All Night is a mix of Road to Perdition, John Wick, and 16 Blocks (underrated Bruce Willis movie). However it's an old-fashioned, macho crime thriller that lacks the stylishness of John Wick or the quotable quotes of Taken.
Story-telling is conventional and effective. You get the character build-ups and arcs (Jimmy begs Danny for money at the start of the movie), with interlocking plot points (for example - the crooked cops are nicely foreshadowed at the start) all neatly tied-up in the end (Jimmy's confession list of his past kills, Mike keeping out of his father's world).
This makes for an engrossing but not enthralling experience. It's no blockbuster but it's certainly worth your time. It doesn't break any new ground (the characters are cliches) but its basics are good. It's as much a character movie as it is an action movie. Jimmy's relationships with Shawn and with his son are believable and don't degenerate into melodrama.
Ed Harris is, as expected, solid as the kind friend and honorable mob boss but vengeful father. Liam Neeson is just as good as the washed-up-and-underestimated-but-still-tough killer with a conscience. Liam Neeson is probably one of today's premier movie tough guys, surpassing even Bruce Willis. Run All Night will add to, but not greatly enhance, his studly superstar image.
On a technical note I found the image quality to be poor. The shadow detail was murky, which is annoying considering that most of the movie takes place at night. Guys, it's 2015. You have no excuse for this.
Ridley Scott fans will want to look out for Bruce McGill as Pat Mullen, Shawn's right-hand man.
2015-01-08
Taken 3 (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) finds his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) dead in his house. The police are after him for the murder and he goes on the run. He tries to evade the police who are led by Franck Dotzler (Forest Whitaker), find out who really killed Lenore, all the while keeping his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) safe from the killers.
***
Taken 3's problem is that it has no theme, or what William Goldman called the story's spine. The Fugitive was about hard-nosed policeman Tommy Lee Jones doing his job, versus nice guy Harrison Ford saving lives even as he was on the run. Tommy Lee Jones's determined "I don't care" reply to Harrison Ford's "I didn't kill my wife" was powerful because it was believable, consistent with his behavior.
The first Taken was a straight out rescue - Liam Neeson as the one-man Die Hard cavalry. Taken 2 was less compelling but at least there was an overall consistency with its focus on MacGyver gimmicks.
Taken 3 has bits of The Fugitive but there's no real connection, antagonistic or otherwise, between Liam Neeson and Forest Whitaker. There's no "I don't care" moment. Oh there's something like that in their dialog, but there's no impact. There's another Fugitive moment when Forest Whitaker finds out that Liam Neeson took a policeman's gun, but didn't use it. But absent The Fugitive's consistent effort to portray Harrison Ford as the selfless good samaritan, it's a wasted effort because there is no follow up.
There's also an attempt to give Liam Neeson an overriding priority to his actions - keeping his daughter safe, versus Forest Whitaker's "doing my job" but it doesn't really work. His daughter's reciprocal absolute trust in him is a nice touch, but somehow also fails to achieve liftoff.
The pacing of the movie is off. It doesn't have The Fugitive's or Taken's sense of urgency. Taken impressed with Liam Neeson's cold-blooded determination to do whatever it took to rescue his daughter - torture, kill, shoot his old friend's innocent wife. In Taken 3 the stakes are not as high. His daughter is sometimes in danger but most of the time he is "only" trying to figure out who killed his wife. His violent means to this relatively not urgent end, seem excessive and he loses our sympathy.
Action movies require a certain level of forgiveness in terms of taking liberties with reality. But there are limits. Liam Neeson goes around killing people when no lives are in immediate danger (like when he storms the bad guy's penthouse - he's not rescuing anyone). His friends pull guns on policemen. And in the end, the only thing Forest Whitaker complains about is him accessing the police computer database without authorization.
Liam Neeson doesn't have any memorable lines and his character just seems to be coasting instead of convincing us of what a bad ass he is. There's a cool twist where he says "good luck" to Forest Whitaker, a line the bad guy said to him in the first movie. But this little gem is already revealed in the movie's trailer, so there's less impact when we see it.
Forest Whitaker never really had any tough guy or edgy persona. But he at least used to have some crazy, quirky energy about him. In Taken 3 he's just totally bland. He's playing the same role as he did in Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand, and doing it with less energy and attitude.
Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen did a good job with the first Taken, making a permanent addition to popular culture and internet memes. Their attempts at sequels have fallen flat. With such a weak and confused script, there's little that director Olivier Megaton can do. Not that he's any kind of genius - Taken 3's action sequences are confusing, confusing enough to throw you out of the movie.
The frustrating thing is that you can see Luc Besson trying to put a fresh spin on things and failing. Just as he tried and failed with Colombiana and Lucy. You can see the effort he puts in, trying to come up with original ideas and avoiding cliches. He hasn't sold out or anything. He's just out of gas.
***
Taken 3's problem is that it has no theme, or what William Goldman called the story's spine. The Fugitive was about hard-nosed policeman Tommy Lee Jones doing his job, versus nice guy Harrison Ford saving lives even as he was on the run. Tommy Lee Jones's determined "I don't care" reply to Harrison Ford's "I didn't kill my wife" was powerful because it was believable, consistent with his behavior.
The first Taken was a straight out rescue - Liam Neeson as the one-man Die Hard cavalry. Taken 2 was less compelling but at least there was an overall consistency with its focus on MacGyver gimmicks.
Taken 3 has bits of The Fugitive but there's no real connection, antagonistic or otherwise, between Liam Neeson and Forest Whitaker. There's no "I don't care" moment. Oh there's something like that in their dialog, but there's no impact. There's another Fugitive moment when Forest Whitaker finds out that Liam Neeson took a policeman's gun, but didn't use it. But absent The Fugitive's consistent effort to portray Harrison Ford as the selfless good samaritan, it's a wasted effort because there is no follow up.
There's also an attempt to give Liam Neeson an overriding priority to his actions - keeping his daughter safe, versus Forest Whitaker's "doing my job" but it doesn't really work. His daughter's reciprocal absolute trust in him is a nice touch, but somehow also fails to achieve liftoff.
The pacing of the movie is off. It doesn't have The Fugitive's or Taken's sense of urgency. Taken impressed with Liam Neeson's cold-blooded determination to do whatever it took to rescue his daughter - torture, kill, shoot his old friend's innocent wife. In Taken 3 the stakes are not as high. His daughter is sometimes in danger but most of the time he is "only" trying to figure out who killed his wife. His violent means to this relatively not urgent end, seem excessive and he loses our sympathy.
Action movies require a certain level of forgiveness in terms of taking liberties with reality. But there are limits. Liam Neeson goes around killing people when no lives are in immediate danger (like when he storms the bad guy's penthouse - he's not rescuing anyone). His friends pull guns on policemen. And in the end, the only thing Forest Whitaker complains about is him accessing the police computer database without authorization.
Liam Neeson doesn't have any memorable lines and his character just seems to be coasting instead of convincing us of what a bad ass he is. There's a cool twist where he says "good luck" to Forest Whitaker, a line the bad guy said to him in the first movie. But this little gem is already revealed in the movie's trailer, so there's less impact when we see it.
Forest Whitaker never really had any tough guy or edgy persona. But he at least used to have some crazy, quirky energy about him. In Taken 3 he's just totally bland. He's playing the same role as he did in Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand, and doing it with less energy and attitude.
Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen did a good job with the first Taken, making a permanent addition to popular culture and internet memes. Their attempts at sequels have fallen flat. With such a weak and confused script, there's little that director Olivier Megaton can do. Not that he's any kind of genius - Taken 3's action sequences are confusing, confusing enough to throw you out of the movie.
The frustrating thing is that you can see Luc Besson trying to put a fresh spin on things and failing. Just as he tried and failed with Colombiana and Lucy. You can see the effort he puts in, trying to come up with original ideas and avoiding cliches. He hasn't sold out or anything. He's just out of gas.
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