Brief Story Line
Set in the year 2055, the earth's air was becoming quite unbreathable and sky nets were built to protect the people. Unfortunately, a meteor fell on the area called B-16 bringing with them alien life form referred to as Pandora and also damaging the sky nets. The military led by Colonel Tam (Carina Lau - Dynasty Warriors, Forbidden City Cop etc) had plan to eradicate Pandora which also had the ability to purify air. So they assigned the local military team led by Johnson Cheng (Sean Lau - Shock Wave 2, The White Storm etc) assisted by the team leader Tyler (Louis Koo - A Witness Out of the Blue, Paradox etc).
What Tyler did not realize was Colonel Tam and Sean Li (Nick Cheung - Guilt by Design, Unbeatable etc) had other plans in case the mission fail which would cause heavy casualties. Without the knowledge of his superiors, Johnson also engaged the help from his former team member Skunk (Philip Keung - .Chasing the Dragon, Call for Heroes etc) in this dangerous mission.
So how would the story conclude? You can find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
When I watched the trailer to this movie, I was really excited at the prospect of seeing lots of action and seemingly full of intense moments. Although I already knew this would be full of special effects, but the first few minutes did not really impress me as even though the visual effects looked good, they seemed too obvious as created by computer. I did not feel like seeing a movie but instead watching a video game. This made me lose a bit on the excitement and sadly the early part of the story telling that was challenging to grasp did not help either. I actually lost interest to really gain the understanding and just focus on the action part.
The characters introduction was done very briefly which resulted to the lack of personal attachment to them. Good thing after more than half of the movie, we grew closer to them and the story also became more interesting. The action sequence especially in the sky were my least favorite part due to the CGI, but the ones involving the fights with aliens were pretty awesome. I really loved that scene on the street which was truly the highlight for me as it was really intense and suspenseful. Oh the climax fight was quite amazing as well.
This movie was directed by Ng Yuen-fai in his directorial debut. He was known as visual effects artist which would explain the heavy use of CGI in this movie. I got to admit though for a Hong Kong movie, this one was quite ahead of its time and gotten a lot of praise for the visual effects but understandably criticized for its plot. Aside from the action, they also added few dramatic elements which was OK though not to the point of melodramatic. There was even a plot twist that unfortunately could have been seen a mile away.
The cast in particular Louis Koo and Sean Lau did their best to make this movie more interesting which they were able to do with their vast experience. Admirably they were still capable in doing action sequence in their age, like plenty of other Hong Kong movie stars. Nick Cheung though was not too impressive for me here. He seemed to be trying too hard to be a cold leader but personally I think he failed. There were two younger cast in support roles, i.e Wan Guopeng as Connor and Janice Wu (My Amazing Boyfriend TV series etc) as Luk, though I was not familiar with any of them and also the appearance of Tse Kwan-ho (The Mad Phoenix etc) as scientist Dr. Chan.
Overall this was an interesting sci-fi action movie with some well crafted action sequence in certain parts but not that impressive in other parts (at least for me). The story was not its strong suit, although it was not something that would really bother me too much as long as the entire action could make up for it. The final fight scenes were very good but the ending felt a bit anticlimactic and probably would have given a more dramatic effect had it ended differently. There was a brief mid end credit scene but no post end credit scene. From what I read, this movie was a huge success both in Hong Kong and in China and looked to provide some healthy profit, so good for them. Anyway if you are looking for a movie of disaster aversion with several men fighting against aliens and full of CGI effects, then you should be entertained by this.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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