Firestorm, the latest action thriller starring Andy Lau, is a character study trying to burst out of its commercial contraptions. The commercial aspects is a cops and robbers film with the volume turned up to eleven. Every moment is crucial. One can almost take the last frame of every shot, matte it and make a comic book out of the whole movie. The hidden art-house aspects are the character study of its two leads and the morality play of right and wrong, which emanates later in the story. Director Alan Yuen keeps things moving along, artfully combining these two components in such a way that there's never time for the audience to stop and think. For most of it, Firestorm is a fun ride.
Andy Lau leads the film sufficiently as the film's righteous hero, but the heavy lifting comes with a cost. Senior Inspector Lui is mostly an action-oriented role. And he only gets interesting till the later portion when the Infernal Affairs-like morality play begins. It's only then Lau holsters his gun and gets to chew some scenery.
It is great to see Gordon Lam, Hong Kong's most versatile working character actor, finally play a lead role in a feature film. Out of the two leads, Lam has the more complex character. Andy Lau is billed as the lead on the poster, but the story is arguably more about Gordon Lam. He's never given a bad performance and here he is the heart of the story. Yao Chen, who I thought would be a love interest for Andy Lau's character (as it usually would), is the romantic love interest for Gordon Lam. I doubt a modern working woman in this day and age will tolerate a convict boyfriend to the level that she does, but Yao Chen brings a much-needed believability to the situation by reacting.
For what the film does for Gordon Lam, it falls short with veteran actors Hu Jun and Ray Lui, who are oddly undeveloped villains. This is not the way to use actors of their caliber; they deserve better. Michael Wong also has a cameo as Andy Lau's boss. Does Wong treat every Chinese film producer to dinner every week or has comprising photos of them? He tries to be subtle, which for him means trying to whisper his lines in a high-pitched voice as if he breathed vials of helium before each take. He is god awful as usual, but fortunately there is very little of him.
The action sequences are all entertaining and it is impressive how they are all set in in busy Hong Kong locales. There's a sufficient amount of design going into the 3D for its action scenes; everybody uses tracer ammunition (which highlights the bullet trajectory) and there's a noteworthy portion with birds. One particular high wire action set piece got too ridiculous. Let's just say if I was dangling at a high altitude, I wouldn't purposely slam the scaffolding that's hoisting me. The finale shootout in Central's Queen Street is the price of admission. Suffice to say, mayhem ensues. For any Airsoft fans out there, with all the Hong Kong police uniforms, SWAT gear, guns and muzzle flash that appears on screen, this will be Disneyland for you.
To match its drama with an epic operatic grandeur, Firestorm's story is built around the metaphor of an oncoming typhoon blowing towards Hong Kong. As my creative writing teacher once said about one of my short stories, "Your pathetic fallacy is pathetic." Sorry, it is too over- the-top at times. For example, Peter Kam's bombastic operatic score is akin to a Final Fantasy game. It sounded like a choir of angels were chanting for Andy Lau's survival through the gunfire. The work Peter Kam done on Isabella and Throwdown has shown subtlety and used music as a way to bring the audience into its world. I noticed that the quiet contemplative score sounded one octave away from the Infernal Affairs score. This is not Kam's fault. I imagine this is the product of financiers citing references based on past box office success. Let's face it, current Chinese and Hong Kong cinema is becoming a producer's medium.
I was aware of how much commercial box ticking was going on throughout the film, but they were never overtly blatant enough to bother my enjoyment. Whenever Firestorm was being too loud and bashing my head, it was the hidden artsy choices, like Gordon Lam in a lead role, the undercover story arc with its morality play, that lifted it back up for me. It's a fun time at the movies and if you're going to see it, the 3D version will not disappoint.
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