Firestorm

Moviegoers who like their Hong Kong action cinema to be unapologetically over the top will have plenty to cheer for in Alan Yuen’s Firestorm. The first-time director’s explosive picture is every bit the big-screen sensation, often placing viewers in the thick of gun battles and not slowing down with reams of backstory and exposition. Gunfire erupts about five minutes into Firestorm when a heavily armed gang robs an armoured van and takes on the police.

The crime scene is an especially traumatic one for senior cop Lui Ming-chit (Andy Lau), who gets rammed by a car and watches in horror when a bystander is shot through the head. And making things worse for him is that old schoolmate Tao Shing-bong (Lam Ka-tung) appears to be in with the bad guys. Lui, it turns out, is quite the hothead and is totally driven in his pursuit of wrongdoers. Flashy mainlander Cao Nan (Hu Jun) is quickly identified as the ringleader, and Lui calls on his troubled team to push hard for evidence that can stick. Tao is followed as an early lead, and, after the gang’s violence escalates to astonishing levels, Lui drafts ex-prisoner pal Tong (Philip Keung) as his mole in an effort to bust the gang before things get even worse. Of course, the violence isn’t going to let up anytime soon, and the result is one of Hong Kong cinema’s most outrageous action finales. The scene opens with a wild car chase through tight hillside streets before Yuen and action director Chin Kar-lok turn the city’s central business district into a war zone, replete with car bombs, toppling buses, cratering streets and a falling bridge. The prime downtown setting alone is enough to set the scene apart from others in local film – usually Hong Kong action sequences end up in industrial estates or other out-of-the-way locations, and even then the thrills don’t reach disaster-movie levels as Firestorm’s do.

Firestorm’s closest comparisons among recent Hong Kong films can be made with Cold War, the top film at the local box office in 2012 and another work directed by first-time talent and backed by Edko Films. Like Cold War, Yuen’s film is a super-slick and expensive looking cop thriller set in a dark, pressure-cooker environment. And both reveal commendable attention to detail: in police operations and jargon in the earlier film, and in authentic-looking locations in Firestorm. But where Cold War was packed with rapid-fire dialogue and a labyrinthine plot, Firestorm keeps things simpler. Protagonists are painted in broad brushstrokes or even as caricatures, and key plot developments play merely as springboards to the next action sequence. A major theme of the picture is how people react and change under intense pressures all around them, but the plot often lacks the detail needed to make its huge character shifts truly believable. Taking the lead role, actor-producer Andy Lau performs in perfect step with the sheer insanity of Firestorm’s proceedings.

Lau leaps through windows, plunges from buildings and gets thrown about in explosions, and still he gets up for more. Elsewhere, mainland actor Hu Jun is a delight as a smug baddie who gets a kick out of teasing the cops, and Philip Keung and Lam Ka-tung also take distinctive key roles. But ultimately it’s Lau and the sheer mayhem of his action show that stick most in the mind once Firestorm’s smoke starts to clear.