White Storm 2: Drug Lords, The (2019) Review

“The White Storm 2: Drug Lords” Theatrical Poster

Director: Herman Yau
Cast: Andy Lau, Louis Koo, Michael Miu, Karena Lam, Kent Cheng, Gordon Lam, Chrissie Chau, Cherrie Ying, Michelle Wai, MC Jin (Jin Au-Yeung), Ben Yuen 
Running Time: 100 min.

By Paul Bramhall

In 2013 the late Benny Chan unleashed The White Storm, one of the most divisive Hong Kong action movies in recent memory. While some hailed it is a glorious throwback to the heroic bloodshed era, others called it an unwatchable mess. I fell squarely into the latter category, finding its mix of saccharine nostalgia, laughable character motivations, implausible back from the dead plot twists, and derivative action scenes to be a truly heinous concoction of awful cinema. So the announcement of a sequel shouldn’t have been something to be thrilled about, however the news that it would be a Tiger Cage style thematic follow-up, focusing on a completely new plot and set of characters, was enough to pique my interest.

For the follow-up, sub-titled Drug Lords, Benny Chan stepped away from the director’s chair (and indeed the production all together) and handed over the reins to Herman Yau. While Yau will likely remain most well-known for the infamous Cat III flicks he made with Anthony Wong in the 1990’s like The Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome, over the subsequent 25 years he’s proven to be as diverse as he is talented. In the late 00’s and early 10’s he dabbled in the kung-fu genre, helming the non-Donnie Yen Ip Man entries The Legend is Born – Ip Man and Ip Man: The Final Fight in 2010 and 2013 respectively, as well as the Qiu Jin biopic The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake in 2011. It would be 2017’s Shock Wave though that gave us our first taste of Herman Yau the big budget action blockbuster director, a bombastic (pun intended) bomb disposal thriller starring Andy Lau.

Despite feeling overly sanitised and ensuring it preached to the Mainland choir, Shock Wave did well at the box office, even if it failed to fully convince that Yau could adapt his directorial approach to big budget commercial filmmaking. Shock Wave was immediately followed up by another action thriller in the form of 2018’s The Leakers, which confirmed audiences suspicions that Yau simply didn’t have the same commercial leanings shared by his contemporaries like Dion Lam. A wet leaf of a pandemic thriller plagued by a dull plot and rather listless direction, it wasn’t enough to stop Yau from getting a third shot at helming a slice of action cinema, and so it is we have The White Storm 2 – The Drug Lords.

Like the original the plot once more focuses on 3 main characters, with only Louis Koo (Paradox, Wild City) returning, seemingly because he has an unwritten contract that states he has to be in every Hong Kong movie made post-2010. In 2019 alone he’d star in 4 sequels, the others being the unfortunately titled P Storm, Chasing the Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch, and Line Walker 2. Here Nick Cheung and Lau Ching-Wan are replaced by Andy Lau (Mission Milano, Switch) and Michael Miu (The Trough, Handsome Siblings), with Lau and Koo playing close friends who work for the same triad gang in the 2004 set opening. Like almost every HK triad gang from 90’s HK cinema, they can get up to all kinds of mischief, but drug dealing is off the table, so when Koo gets busted for doing just that, trouble awaits. The triad boss, played by Kent Cheng (Run and Kill, Walk on Fire), orders Lau to cut off three of Koo’s fingers, which he reluctantly does.

Skip forward to 2019, and Koo has risen up the ranks to become one of the biggest and most feared drug lords in Hong Kong. Lau on the other hand has gone straight, and having gotten into a relationship with a lawyer has become a billionaire financial expert (don’t ask), while also running an anti-drug charity on the side. In terms of character progression, I confess I was more convinced by the fact he’d exchanged his 2004 manbun for a classic Andy Lau haircut than the way his character had been written. Lau’s happy life is interrupted though when his ex calls him to say she was pregnant when they split up, and that the 15-year-old son he never knew he had has gone wayward in the Philippines thanks to (you guessed it) – drugs!

Naturally Lau heads over there to find him and hopefully indulge in some father son bonding, however through some rather contrived circumstances, somewhat hilariously (although unintentionally so) Lau ends up engaging in a rooftop chase with his high as a kite offspring. Probably not the best approach for a first meeting, so it’s rather unsurprising when the son falls to his death (as a sidenote – this movie must break the record for the number of drug addled characters who fall to their death). All riled up over those evil damn drugs, once back in Hong Kong Lau uses his celebrity status as a financial expert to declare a $100,000,000 bounty to whoever kills Koo, setting the pair on a collision course.

I almost forgot to mention Michael Miu’s character, who makes up the cop of the trio, and is clearly only around because Mainland censorship requires law enforcement to be in there somewhere, at least looking like they’re trying to catch the bad guys. Had The White Storm 2 been made 20 years ago, it’s doubtful his character would exist at all, but as the expression goes, needs must. I’d say his role was a thankless one, but compared to the women in the cast, his character is given plenty to do. Miu’s wife, who’s also a cop, returns from maternity leave in the 2004 set opening, and almost immediately has her throat slit on her first job back in action. Lau’s ex only calls him because she’s got terminal cancer and will soon be moving off the mortal coil. Lau’s current wife has fertility problems and (not really a spoiler) ends up shot in the head. The message seems to be clear – if you’re a woman, life sucks.

The treatment of women is indicative of a remarkably lazy script, one that often falls back on cliches that were old even in the 90’s. A character tells another just before a raid to be careful, practically announcing that they’re going to die a few moments later. Another cop proposes to his cop girlfriend shortly before an operation, offering absolutely zero surprises as to what happens next. It’s painfully by the numbers, and when it tries to do something different it bizarrely chooses to take sides with former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial War on Drugs, even casting a Duterte stand-in to proudly declare how all drug dealers should be killed – a viewpoint Lau’s character takes to heart.

Then of course there’s the action, a critical ingredient in any action thriller. While action director Hon Ping’s shootouts and scuffles are serviceable, the real star of the show is car stunt director Gobi Ng, whose work here can essentially be seen as a calling card to tell Bruce Law to move over. There’s a number of impressive car stunts on display that for the most part (or should I say, the important parts) eschew using CGI, opting to be done for real. I had to rewind a blink and you’ll miss it driver’s seat POV of a stuntman getting hit head on by a speeding car, and the ending consists of an impressive 5-minute chase that throws in plenty of collateral damage. Just when you think it can’t get any better, it shifts to an underground MTR station that has people bouncing off bonnets and barely ducking out of the way. It’s not only a highlight of the movie, but also stands out as one of the best action sequences in HK cinema of the 2010’s.

The final reel car chase ends The White Storm 2 on an undeniable high note, so much so that the fact that there’s barely any tension between Lau and Koo’s characters hardly seems to matter. However the adrenaline rush is a short-term deal, and as strong as the vehicular mayhem is, it ultimately can’t make up for the fact that everything surrounding it is particularly weak. Even Lau and Koo’s natural charisma seems muted for the most part, even if their screen presence isn’t, making The White Storm 2 feel like a production which had the potential to be so much more. As for the all-important question – is it better than The White Storm? To that I can confidently say, it definitely is.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10