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 Continue reading
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