High Forces (2024) Review

“High Forces” Theatrical Poster

Director: Oxide Pang
Cast: Andy Lau, Liu Tau, Zhang Zifeng, Qu Chuxiao, Jiang Mengjie, Jiang Chao, Eric Chou
Running Time: 115 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The disaster movie on a plane has been going through a bit of a renaissance in Asia during recent years. China threw their hat into the ring with 2019’s The Captain, and Korea’s returned to the genre twice in as many years with 2022’s Emergency Declaration and 2024’s Hijack 1971. 2024 is also the year China decided to get back at it, with (the as yet to be released) Wings of Dread representing the iQIYI web-movie end of the scale, and the Andy Lau produced and starring High Forces representing the big budget other end.

Directed by Oxide Pang, High Forces is only the 2^nd movie he’s helmed in the 2020’s, no doubt in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which put a pause on any filmmaking activity in China for a couple of years at the start of the decade. A director who began his career as one half of the Pang Brothers, since debuting with 2000’s Bangkok Dangerous the pair cranked out several movies spanning Thailand, Hong Kong, and even Hollywood (which included a Nicolas Cage starring remake of their debut). The last production they worked on together was 2013’s firefighting disaster movie Out of Inferno, a genre which ironically Oxide Pang returned to for his last directorial outing prior to High Forces, with 2023’s Flash Over. Having parted ways with his sibling Pang spent the late 2010’s working on local Mainland productions, so his latest offers the first time since Out of Inferno to be working with a star (and budget) as big as Andy Lau.

While I never thought I’d write this, it seems Herman Yau’s Customs Frontline from earlier in the year is an influence on High Forces. In that movie Jacky Cheung starred as a bi-polar customs officer, and for his latest Oxide Pang takes the idea and runs with it. So we get Andy Lau (Shock Wave 2, Mission Milano) as a bi-polar security officer who’s been hired to work for China’s newest airline, a chance to start afresh after his marriage fell apart thanks to his “capricious tantrums”. Now on medication for his anger management issues, Lau is a level-headed guy, and since he’s off-shift is given an economy seat when the inaugural flight sets off from Southeast Asia. His ex-wife (Liu Tau – The Foreigner) and teenage daughter (Zhang Zifeng – Adoring) also happen to be on the same flight in first class, returning from another trip to visit a specialist who could help bring back their daughters vision, which she lost during a tragic incident 8 years earlier.

For anyone who’s watched any Chinese action movie in recent years, you’ll know that the made-up Southeast Asia setting (in this case “Batty Airport”) offers an excuse for some criminal activity to go down that would never be feasible if it was set on the Mainland. In this case, it allows for those lax Southeast Asian airport staff to have somehow let a bunch of hijackers armed with guns (with hollow point bullets so they can be used on a plane) and parachutes onto the flight. The hijackers are led by a bi-polar psychopath played by Qu Chuxiao (Wandering Earth, The Yin Yang Master) who’s after a US$500 million payout, and when the authorities don’t comply, he’s not afraid to start slimming down the passenger list. So the stage is set for a tense battle between a bi-polar security officer and a bi-polar hijacker, with the question of who’ll be able to leverage their mental health condition most effectively to take down the other.

I confess that the logical part of my brain feels like it should mercilessly tear apart High Forces for its insensitive approach to such a serious topic (even more than Customs Frontline!), however perhaps the bigger confession is that I found myself enjoying it. Pang’s latest is frankly so oblivious to its own stupidity that it somehow becomes entertaining, with a simplistic portrayal of anyone suffering from bi-polar disorder distilled down to – on meds and stable, or prone to fits of uncontrollable rage. Whereas Lau’s anger at a traffic jam leads him to mounting the curb and driving along the pavement, Chuxiao has no objection to having a wine bottle smashed over his head, and enjoys sticking his thumb into a passenger’s bullet wound. They even get their own color coded ‘rage filters’ to let us know when their disorder has kicked in, with Lau’s outbursts suddenly switching the screen to a red filter, and Chuxiao’s to green.

Outside of the mental health related action, High Forces fits the expected description of “Die Hard on a plane” to a tee. We get the hijackers identifying Lau’s family through the discovery of a photograph, and Lau even strikes up a conversation with one of the passengers through a kid’s walkie talkie set, allowing the passenger to keep him informed on the hijacker’s movements. Of course, here the plot uses the scenario to plough some emotional beats, with the passenger who ends up with the walkie talkie being his estranged daughter, the robotic voice distorter the device uses preventing them from realising they’re talking to each other. Naturally bonding will happen, bridges will be mended, and tears will eventually be shed.

I’m aware I’m making High Forces sounds like a train wreck, and while parts of it certainly are, there are also aspects of it done really well. Lau is far more effective here than he was in last year’s lamentable I Did It My Way, being perhaps the only other star from Hong Kong’s golden era outside of Jackie Chan who’s been able to successfully transfer his popularity to Mainland productions (and if anything he’s got one up on Chan, in that he’s also been able to maintain his popularity in HK). Likewise Chuxiao makes for an effective villain, with a welcome ruthless streak that sees him killing passengers with reckless abandon whenever his back’s up against the wall.

The action itself displays a surprisingly brutal streak for a Mainland production, maybe in part down to my own expectation that Lau was going to skulk around and apprehend all the bad guys, so as soon as it became apparent that his plan was to kill them all, it immediately made things more enjoyable. I guess there are benefits to not having your hero be a cop. Arms get snapped in the wrong direction causing self-impalements, faces get bashed into the floor, and knives get stabbed into necks, with Lau’s red rage filter unintentionally harking back to Chang Cheh’s use of the same for any particularly bloody deaths in Heroes Two 50 years earlier.

The environment of the A380 the narrative plays out in is also put to good use, featuring its own beauty clinic and duty-free shop, ensuring there are plenty of different environments for the action beats to play out it. The apparent lack of any turbulence sometimes betrays the fact that the whole thing is obviously being filmed on a stationery set, but it’s a minor niggle, with the finale going for an all-out approach. At one point Lau, his daughter, and Chuxiao are all entangled in parachute ropes dangling outside the plane, the greenscreen work not quite convincing to make it the adrenaline pumping spectacle its aiming for, but in its place the result is if anything charmingly goofy. The fact that the scene takes full advantage of the not-so-subtle foreshadowing in an earlier interaction, where one of the flight attendants excitedly tells her colleague she’s finally got her skydiving license, only adds to the gratuitous spectacle of it all.

Ultimately Pang’s latest is a tough call to review. Do you rate something on how entertained you where, even if a lot of the entertainment derived from watching it wasn’t intentional, and that your brain is telling you it can’t really be considered a good movie. Or do you take the detached critic approach and view it from a distance, acknowledging that it’s basically a contrived disaster flick, with the most disastrous aspect of all being its incorporation of pitting a bi-polar protagonist against a bi-polar antagonist. Since I always choose to go with how I felt as the end credits roll, for High Forces I’ll go with the former. Sure, it might not be high art, but approach it with the right expectations, and there’s no reason why you won’t be highly entertained (just not for all the reasons you expected).

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10