I Did It My Way - A Suspenseful Enough Action Thriller Movie With Nice Performance from Andy Lau and Gordon Lam

As mentioned in the post before this, I was on holiday with my wife for the whole last week. During the flight to our destination by Cathay Pacific, I enjoyed the variety of Hong Kong and Chinese movies which either did not play in Indonesia or only played at limited cinemas in short time that I did not have the chance to see them. Anyway there were several films that I watched during the flights to and return, but I prefer to write about this movie. Well here's more on it.

Brief Story Line

The Hong Kong Cybercrime unit led by Eddie Fong (Eddie Peng - Duckweed, Wu Kong etc) had been eyeing to capture leader of major drug syndicate referred to as the Boss. During a bust, the police managed to apprehend Uncle Chiu (Philip Keung - Warriors of Future, Trivisa etc) who was suspected as the Boss. Chiu later asked to speak to his lawyer George Lam (Andy Lau - Shock Wave 2, The Great Wall etc).

Lam who was actually in the midst of wedding preparation with his pregnant girlfriend Vivian (Cya Liu - Limbo, See Her Again TV series etc) decided to concentrate on selling the tons of drugs illegally imported to Hong Kong. Lam also suspected there was a mole inside their organization and assigned his trusted right hand man Sau Ho (Gordon Lam - Chasing the Dragon 2, Cyber Heist etc) to investigate. Things got further complicated when their foreign drugs business partner felt betrayed when Lam went through the dark web to sell the drugs.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

As you might have guessed, the reason I was interested with this was because of Andy Lau's name. I am a fan of his movies which generally were enjoyable to me. Amazingly he had played in more than 100 films and still actively star several times in a year. Anyway the movie's plot might have been familiar, especially with the existence of police mole in the crime syndicate (reminding me a bit of Infernal Affairs). But the part that interest me was Andy Lau's portrayal as a villain and his friendship with Sau Ho. Despite its rushed early scenes, the story telling to me was still OK and I did not have too much difficulty in understanding the whole story (including the simplification of the hacking/dark web use that might be annoying for people who have knowledge of it, but good enough for person like me).

The action sequence was a nice added value as they were pretty well executed and not too over the top like in many cases of Hong Kong's action movies. It should not be surprising considering the director was Jason Kwan who had experience in directing movies like Chasing the Dragon and its sequel. But credits definitely have to be given to the action directors Chin Ka-lok (experienced stunt-man and actor) and Dion Lam who had won awards for best action choreography. I would definitely have loved to see this in the cinema with good sound system. Too bad I have to settle with watching it from the small screen of the inflight entertainment using standard head phone.

The movie had some Hong Kong veteran stars aside from Philip Keung, such as Simon Yam (As the Light Goes Out, Election etc) as Eddie Fong's superior, Lam Suet (Saving Mr. Wu, PTU etc) as Chief Inspector of Narcotics Bureau and Kent Cheng (Ip Man 4: The Finale, New Police Story etc) in minor role. In addition to those names, there were also some support cast like Terrance Lau (Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, 940920 TV series etc) as Davis who work for Lam, Kevin Chu (Falling in Love with Cats TV series etc) as one of Uncle Chiu's team Chan Siu-nam and few others. But the star powers were definitely Andy Lau, Gordon Lam and Eddie Peng, although I agreed with critics view that Peng was rather under utilized here. Btw, Andy Lau was also credited as Executive Producer.

This film had a duration of 115 minutes including closing credits that was accompanied by a nice enough song sung by Andy Lau. From what I read, the theme song had literal translation of Understanding the Reasoning. There was no mid or post end credit scene and I noticed it was produced in 2023, so not exactly a brand new film. Nevertheless I was still grateful I had the chance to watch it even if it's not exactly the best of Andy Lau's films. It did not perform that well in box office either, especially compared to his other movie The Wandering Earth 2 which was 2nd highest grossing film of the same year. 

Overall this was a pretty entertaining action thriller movie for me with convincing appearance by the lead cast Andy Lau and Gordon Lam and interesting enough plot. Though some might say the plot was convoluted, I felt it was not as bad as other movies and easy enough to grasp. Sadly if you are interested in watching this, it's not available on local streaming service, but I think you could search for it on the internet. Or if you happen to fly using Cathay Pacific, you could certainly give it a try.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars