This was a movie that was released few days ago and intrigued me due to its title. I read the synopsis and thought it might be worth to try. However there were not a lot of theaters showing the film, and it was only playing in 1 cinema chain. But it did play in 1 of the theater not far from my home. Anyway, I will just get on with the film now.
Brief Story Line
Set in 1996 before Hong Kong was to be returned to China a year later, the police was keen to reduce crime by capturing criminals. Their target was one of the most notorious, a ruthless & intelligent criminal named Logan Long (Tony Leung Ka-fai - Double Vision, The Myth etc) with his favorite MO to kidnap wealthy businessmen for ransom. In order to do so, they assigned undercover detective named Sky He (Louis Koo - Paradox, Rob-B-Hood etc) to infiltrate Logan's gang.
However, it was not an easy mission since Logan's team such as Doc (Gordon Lam - Firestorm, Trivisa etc), Logan's brother Farrel (Sherman Ye), the only female Bunny (Sabrina Qiu) and few others were suspicious of Sky.
So how would the story conclude? Find them all this action crime movie.
End of Brief Story Line
As I mentioned above, this movie had the words Chasing the Dragon in its title which was a movie that I enjoyed 2 years back. However, when I read the brief synopsis and saw the stars in it, I realized this was not a real sequel in term of story but I still went ahead and remained hopeful it would be entertaining. The film only had similar theme of telling the story based on real life criminal. This time, the focus was on Logan Long (from what I understood, it was based on Cheung Tze-keung a notorious Hong Kong gangster AKA Big Spender).
This movie felt a bit inconsistent to my opinion, as the beginning seemed to be right on track with showing off how dangerous Logan Long was, but then the focus shifted to detective Sky & his unique "MacGyver-like" capabilities and somehow along the way, it did not feel like a crime drama action and instead becoming just another action movie. It was quite weird since this one was directed by Wong Jing, the co-director from the 2017 movie. While the first one had some actions, but it never deviate from the main focus which was the story of Crippled Ho, whereas in here, Logan Long's screen time was a bit too limited and he became like any regular villain in Hong Kong's old gangster movies.
The action itself in here was pretty average where mostly were using guns. There were some intense moments towards the end and some surprising twist which made the movie felt a bit interesting. It was also having few special appearances by well known actors & actresses, though the only familiar face for me was Simon Yam as Sky's superior. Credit has to be given by the 3 male leads Louis Koo, Tony Leung and Gordon Lam as they did try to give their best, but unfortunately I already had high expectation because of the title and was hoping for a good quality semi biography movie which it failed to deliver. This film might have been more enjoyable for audience if they had kept the original title Master of Ransom instead of changing it, which I thought was a move to "trick" us into thinking this as a good sequel of the popular & successful Chasing the Dragon.
Overall this was a mediocre movie without anything that truly excelled. It did not have spectacular actions, the story was average and even the villain was not properly shown due to his limited screen time, especially for a movie that only focused on the mission of undercover job by Louis Koo's character (I did not have knowledge whether he was a real life person which made it even more irritating). Btw, there was no mid or post end credit scene. So if you are looking for a Hong Kong gangster movie with some actions, you can give this a try. But do not expect this to be a movie of the same quality as the original film, The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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