You
can’t use the term “bridge and tunnel people” derisively in Hong Kong. At this
point, you must be pretty lucky and well off to have a nice place and Kowloon.
From there, the Cross-Harbour Tunnel is the only practical way to get to
Causeway Bay and the Hong Kong Island business district. Unfortunately, a villainous
madman has wired the bridge to explode and he holds a grudge against the cop
who stands the best chance of defusing it in Herman Yau’s Shock Wave (trailer
here) which releases today on DVD.
Typically,
Superintendent JS Cheung’s bomb squad work is short but intense. He cuts the
right wire and its Miller Time. He cuts the wrong one and he wakes up at the Pearly
Gates. So far, so good. However, Cheung was briefly loaned to the major crimes
unit to go undercover with Peng Hong’s gang, because of their frequent use of explosive
devices. Cheung helps bust most of them, after a bloody and protracted heist attempt
descends into utter chaos, but Peng gets away.
Six
months later, Cheung is reinstated, promoted, and seriously dating school
teacher Carmen Li. Suddenly, Peng is also back, apparently financed by shady Southeast
Asian interests. After testing Cheung with a few warm-up bombs, Peng takes the
Cross-Harbour hostage, wiring it up with enough explosives to cause a total
collapse. He also has hundreds of hostages, including an off-duty cop.
Shock Wave starts with a bang
worthy of Lau’s massively explosive cop thriller Firestorm, but the second act falls into a repetitive pattern,
basically focusing on Cheung’s efforts to defuse each new device, while Peng ominously
chuckles up his sleeve. However, the last half hour or so returns the film to
its combustible form, even eclipsing the earlier bedlam. Yet, throughout it all,
Lau’s megawatt star presence shines through. It is easy to see why he is still
the most bankable worldwide male movie star, whose name isn’t Salman Khan. Lau
also develops some appealingly complicated chemistry with Song Jia’s Carmen Li.
It is a surprisingly awkward and honest relationship, which makes it much more
believable than most cop movie romances.
Jiang
Wu opts for the quiet slow-burn as Peng, but he certainly projects a fiercely
single-minded drive and a stone-cold ruthlessness. However, Philip Keung and Babyjohn
Choi steal a number of scenes as Cheung’s major crimes colleague on the brink
of a nervous breakdown and the young cop among the hostages.
Yau
is an old hand when it comes to action movies, so you can count on him to not
be stingy with the explosions. Indeed, it is not called Shock Wave in English for no reason. Things happen in this film
that will stun viewers who only watch focus-grouped Hollywood movies, but it
all makes perfect sense if you know your HK-Chinese language cinema.
Recommended for Lau fans and anyone who digs ticking time-bomb movies, Shock Wave is now available on DVD.