Motorway

Review by Neo (Andrew Chan) FCCA

"Motorway" is well directed, produced and possesses some exhilarating car stunts, but leading star Shawn Yue fails to make his character interesting to follow My personal interest in director Soi Cheang's works dates back to my 2004′s "Love Battlefield" review. Quoting myself in the 2004: "Director Soi is a brilliant director that knows how to 'cheat' the audience but not in a bad way, but rather a terrific way." Back then, Soi was only starting out in his career and that movie took me by the storm and by the end of the film, I was overwhelmed by how much I cared and emoted with the characters and the situation. Since then, Soi continued to venture further into this path and made some wonderfully dark and character driven thrillers like "Dog Bite Dog", "Home Sweet Home" and his first encounter with Shawn Yue in "Shamo", before Soi began his association with Johnnie To's Milkway Films beginning with 2009′s "Accident". In many ways, "Accident" is Soi's first half-hearted crack at commercial cinema before going full on commercial for the first time in his latest corroboration with To in "Motorway". It is not necessary a bad thing, as there is still a certain degree of emotional core in his work, but it lacks the character of his earlier films. Despite, "Motorway" comes off engaging and entertaining, but with a team of Soi and To, one cannot stop the flow of greater expectations and in turn, "Motorway" comes off as one of the pair lesser works in comparison.

Having met Shawn Yue earlier this year at the "Love in the Buff" world premiere, you can tell that he is a man full of confidence and is now at a stage and age where he is ready to really carry the film and burden the shoulders of the male leading roles. Therefore, it is all the more disappointing to see him fail to add anything to his character and to be totally honest, he is fast becoming more wooden and stoic than ten years ago. In the Hospital scene, which was supposed to be film's most dramatic moment, Yue failed the audience by covering his faces when he is weeping in tears. For god's sake, it is his only moment in the film where he can display genuine emotions and set up a finale where the audience can actually care about. Instead, we are left with the audience starring at how cool the car drifting in tight angles is rather than caring about the person driving the car. If Yue continues to act like this, he is simply wasting his time and opportunities to become a truly long term box office draw card or acting award nominations. However for the sake of the future of Hong Kong cinema, I sincerely wish to be proved otherwise.

On the other hand, Anthony Wong is simply amazing in his role as the retiring cop who has done it all before. Wong is the reason why the film possesses an emotional core and in many ways it is him, not Yue that carries the burden of engaging the audience along for the ride. He is the perfect example of an actor in a car chasing scene, where the audience cares more about his well-being and safety rather than how fast the car is going or how cool the next drift will be. In many ways, the film relies so much on Wong, that the film essentially ended when his involvement with the film departed as well (trying my best to avoid spoilers).

Adding to the mix is a strong supporting cast of Johnnie To's regulars. Michelle Yip stands out in a miniature role as Wong's supporting wife. Yip's teary eyes and expressive emotional face in the hospital scene is a perfect example of how Yue should have approached the situation. Another actor that Yue should take a page out of is long time supporting actor Gordon Lam as their police boss. Lam despite being stoic in the role is able to portray a level of depth in his character and the way he handled himself at the hospital with unspoken words and his red watery eyes tells a thousand words. In many ways, Lam is probably due for some recognition and his hard work throughout the last decade has not been gone unnoticed. Others like Barbie Hsu are wasted in a paper-thin doctor role.

All in all, "Motorway" is an entertaining and fun movie ride that will most likely satisfy anyone who enjoyed "Initial D" or to a lesser extent the Cannes Film Festival's favourite – "Drive". However, as a complete cinematic experience, the film lacks character, script and emotional depth. It is impossible not to expect more from talented director Soi Cheang, producer Johnnie To and the Milkway Team. Still, "Motorway" works because of its slick production values, quality direction, sharply edited, comprising of some well-choreographed car stunts and an excellent acting turn by Anthony Wong. It may not win any awards, but for the targeted audience, it is probably good enough (Neo 2012)

Neo rates it 7.75/10

Producer Johnny To and director Soi Cheang have been developing this project since 2009. Through some rewrites, re-shoots and re-edits, Motorway safely released into theaters in June 2012. The script, written by Joey O'Bryan and Kam-Yuen Szeto doesn't offer new things rather than similar plot from The Fast And The Furious, Gone In 60 Second (2000) or Hongkong production itself, Initial D (2005). Well, it won't bother me to watch the movies though.

Jiang is a getaway driver who agreed to help a dangerous criminal escape from jail as his one last assignment. They both plan to rob an expensive diamond within Wui Tai Commercial Building. Veteran cop who's going to retire soon, Lo must train young ambitious traffic cop, Cheung in such short time to catch Jiang especially defeat his mastery driving skills.

Director Cheang have trying to fasten the tempo. Feel bored actually came by some drama that involved Lo's background. Fortunately, these popular names did their job very well despite most of them had limited screen presences. Key characters like Anthony Wong, Shawn Yue and Guo Xiaodong have shone with their own roles. Famous Barbie Hsu gave another memorable minimum time as Cheung's possible love interest.

Don't expect some fancy chasing scenes alongside with exclusive cars being crashed like Hollywood typical. Motorway offers those in smaller scale, judging by the intriguing conflicts between charismatic bad guy and sympathetic good guys into simple yet effective dialog exchanges. Cinematographer Yuen Man Fung and Kenny Tse had done some guerrilla-style, shot without permits inside buildings or across streets and highways in night mode.

Minimum lighting from the natural lights towards the end of the movie quite distracting to see what's going on. Still forgiven though. Overall, Motorway is still impressive to watch despite those familiar ideas and conventional styles. Our hero must get through confidence, deflicted, rise by the great advices before win over his target. Therefore, only smart filmmaking skills make it slightly different this time!

I am not particularly interested in cars of any type, and with the over exaggerated things in "The Fast and the Furious" movies, then it was nice to see "Motorway". It is a lot more realistic than many other car movies, and best of all, it has proper actors in it who actually possess an ounce of acting talent.

The story is about Cheung (played by Shawn Yue) and Lo (played by Anthony Wong) who work in a specialized department of the Hong Kong traffic police department. When they learn of a planned heist, all bets are off, and their driving skills are put to extreme limits.

Story-wise then "Motorway" was alright, although the story did lack a more comprehensive depth. But it was easy to follow, straight forward and right to the point.

The movie was full of car chases, and does put "The Fast and the Furious" to shame. It was elegantly filmed and it was as if the audience was right there in midst of the gasoline-injected action.

But the acting in the movie was really outstanding. And what made me buy this movie, aside from my love for Asian cinema, was that Hong Kong heavyweighter actor Anthony Wong was in it. And he performed very well, and together with Shawn Yue, they managed to make an otherwise flaccid movie genre interesting to watch.

If you like Asian cinema, and if you like cars, of course, then you should most definitely sit down to watch "Motorway".

Having watched many Asian and 'Hollywood' movies about cars / street racing etc..I found this movie quite entertaining and better than many Asian 'car' movies I seen, so basically about a cop (or bunch of them) hot on a trail of a couple of robber who purposely got himself arrested to free his mate that was already captured by police - involving car chases and stunts/techniques and a planned escape routes by using very very narrow roads and the robbers proceed to do a heist / being double crossed by a rival gang etc...The police not being happy from the events of what happened, of course masters some driving techniques and skills, maybe he's been watching too much Tokyo Drift ! Title 'Motorway' itself yeah not very original and a few obvious blunders in that movie like the finale - the car chase Audi A4 (driven by the cop) and the Nissan Skyline (driven by the robber) by the time the chased had stopped the 2 wrecked cars were a Mazda 323 sedan and a Toyota Corolla Levin !!!

Nothing relevant, but it's still a pretty good movie.

I expected it to be like Fast and Furious, but that's not exactly that.

It's not about winning a race or being the fastest.

It's about catching road criminals and mastering a special driving technique.

About a car each minute gets blasted and 1000 liters of gasoline are burnt...

They sure did not have ecology in mind.

But anyway, if you like police stories, Hong Kong and fast cars...You will enjoy it.