Apparently vanishing without a trace following its theatrical bow in 1995, RED ZONE is a modest little Golden Harvest gunplay actioner, not quite worth the trouble seeking out, but hardly a bad watch if it comes across your desk.
Hobbling itself at the outset, the film's first reel is largely dedicated the legal procedural work so lugubrious it threatens to sink the film. A high-ranking mob boss is in police custody awaiting trial, with the proceeding delayed by the car-bombing of the current judge (okay, that part's not so dull). In the interim, the police set up a sting to catch the mobster's girlfriend, Ivy (Valerie Chow), tempting her with handsome undercover Thai expat Kwong (Ken Lo). Of course, the mob is hot on their tail, but with Ivy quickly falling for Kwong's not-inconsiderable charms (the film has him take an entire phone call while sustaining an ab crunch on a vertical exercise board!), it soon becomes unclear where her allegiances lie, and if she's shifting to the side of the police...
Like a lot of HK potboilers, no one in this has anything resembling a private life or family commitments outside their role in the plot, and action remains limited to the A-story at all times. It'd be easy to fault this as shoddy writing, but after suffering through more than enough Hollywood thrillers over-stuffed with B-stories and diversions, HK genre filmmaking's no-nonsense approach actually proves quite refreshing. What character nuances exist are gleaned from the margins, like a sweet meet-cute between Ivy and Kwong where he sings karaoke for her in his native Thai (the song was apparently a big Thai hit at the time of the film's release!). Essentially, the film is buoyed - to the extent it is - by the charisma of its leads, particularly Lo and Chow, who have excellent chemistry. Things become electric when they're onscreen together, with the rest of the procedural mumbo jumbo featuring cops Kenny Ho and Rongguang Yu feeling like a let-down in comparison. In the end, this disparity leaves the film perched in a nether-zone, always diverting enough to maintain interest without ever really distinguishing itself. Perhaps that helps explain its obscurity (it's generally stuff from either end of the bell curve that remains in the public consciousness), but it's a fate not quite deserving of this serviceable potboiler - not really a diamond in the rough, but far from total rubbish, either.
