I watched this movie while I was in the flight from Jakarta to Bali and return during my vacation trip with my wife @yennymakanmulu (as mentioned in my earlier post of Batman VS Superman: Dawn of Justice). This movie was inspired by actual events of a kidnapping of a major Hong Kong movie star in Beijing, China.
The story started with few people under the lead of Zhang Hua (played by Wang Qian Yuan) who were driving around in a car trying to kidnap wealthy people by impersonating as police officers. While looking for their next victim, they stopped by a karaoke place where they targeted to kidnap the person who drove the car that was parked outside (I think it's because it's luxury car). When the person came out of the karaoke place, apparently it was a famous Hong Kong movie star, called simply as Mr. Wu (played by the famous Andy Lau). While Mr. Wu was being asked to be photographed by fans and encouraged by the movie producer he had meeting with, Zhang Hua's gang insisted that the car Mr. Wu drove has been involved in a hit and run, so he had to be brought in for questioning. After some heated objection from Mr. Wu himself and his friend, the gang took out guns to threaten and ultimately Mr. Wu was driven in their car.
The scene later moved 18 hours after the kidnapping, where Zhang Hua appeared to have some bruises on his face and was being questioned in a police station by 1 of the detective, Xing Feng (played by Liu Ye). We would find out later that the deadline for paying the ransom would be less than 1 hour since that scene, afterwards, Mr. Wu would be executed.
Scene would move back to the time when Mr. Wu was brought to a house in a rather remote area where apparently there was another kidnap victim, Xiao Dou. To ensure Mr. Wu cooperated, Zhang Hua threatened to kill Xiao Dou for not paying his ransom. Mr. Wu could not watch the intended execution so he offered to pay the ransom for both of them which Zhang Hua and the other kidnapping members who consisted of a fan of Mr. Wu and 1 or 2 trigger happy thugs reluctantly accepted.
Since the bank where Mr. Wu kept his money only opened on the following day and to avoid Mr. Wu rescued by the police, Zhang Hua asked Mr. Wu to request 1 of his most trusted friend to collect the money. Hence Mr. Wu called Mr. Su (played by Lam Suet) who was his friend from the army days and requested him to withdraw the money from bank without telling the police.
Meanwhile the policemen tried their best to search for the gang's location since Zhang Hua did not want to inform the police. He felt there would be no point as he would be sentenced to death anyway due to heavy law violations including the purchase of firearms, kidnapping and murder. The police would later use various means such as interrogations of possible suspects, acquaintance, girlfriend, circling possible kidnap areas to acquire the information.
So can the police make it in time to rescue Mr. Wu? How was Zhang Hua captured? What will happen to him and the rest of his gang? Well, as usual, you would have to watch it till finished.
I had a good moment watching this movie, even if I had to wait for 3 days to watch the remaining 20 minutes of the movie (the flight was too short to watch full movie till finished). I believe Andy Lau has matured in the recent years by taking lesser action films and more dramatic films. He has also matured literally as indicated by my wife (her exact words were: "Andy Lau so old? I am shocked"....).
Anyway, if you are into a quite serious chinese movie with tension and dramatic scenes, you are welcome to watch this movie. There was also a song which was sung by Andy Lau as bonus. Or, if you happen to be going in a flight by Garuda, you can choose to watch this as it is one of the in-flight entertainment for the month of March 2016.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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