‘War’ Games
Third time lucky.
Cold War 1994
Director: Longman Leung • Writer: Longman Leung
Starring: Terrance Lau, Daniel Wu, Wu Kang-ren, Louise Wong, Tse Kwan-ho, Aaron Kwok, Chow Yun-fat, Everyone
Hong Kong • 1hr 57mins
Opens Hong Kong May 1 • IIB
Grade: B+
Not to tip anyone’s hand but Hong Kong filmmakers are getting it together on the “What we do in the shadows” front. Meaning the new normal has been freaked out over, absorbed and parsed, and many have figured out how to make films in the new world order that will neither raise hackles nor break the rules. Cold War, in 2012, was something of a police procedural experiment, all rapid fire story leaps and ultra-stylised visuals, and Cold War II (2016) turned up the heat (heh heh) a tiny bit – thematically and narratively. Returning director Longman Leung Lok-man took a wee break with Anita, and now sees Andrew Lau Wai-keung’s Infernal Affairs trilogy and raises the stakes by one, to quadrilogy, with Cold War 1994 | 寒戰1994, picking up the shady cops and shadier politicians action after the first two films’ Big Bad was revealed to be disgruntled deputy commissioner Peter Choi (Chang Kuo-chu), who enlisted equally bitter beat cop Joe Lee (Eddie Peng Yu-yan) to help him wrestle control of the police department from spineless bureaucrats.
Leung takes the safe way out, flashing back in the careers of Choi and his uneasy partnership with OCTB superintendent MB Lee (Tony Leung Ka-fai) – Joes’s dad – pitching 1994 on a case they both worked back in the day, setting the film during the colony end times. Of the three – soon to be four (Cold War 1995 is on the way) – entries in the growing franchise, 1994 is by far the best. It’s the most entertaining, with more of a political thriller bent, it balances nostalgia with allegory, taps legacy actors while handing off the action to the next generation and, perhaps best of all, has Louise Wong Dan-ni as badass Lo Yuen triad boss Jodie Yuen. If someone dares remake The Heroic Trio, please make sure Louise Wong is in it.
Not sure who needs the ambulance…
Cold War 1994 is essentially the origin story for the rotten duo of Choi and Lee. Daniel Wu Yin-cho takes over from Chang as Choi, a deputy commissioner of ops in 1994 who strikes up a strange working relationship with gangster squad boss Lee, now played by Terrance Lau Chun-him. Choi is a power player and increasingly aggrieved cop, Lee is an overworked, chain-smoking grunt; more rank and file than management. The story begins with relatively freshly appointed commissioner Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok Fu-shing) dropping in on lawyer Oswald Kan (Chow Yun-fat), asking to see a file he’s put together on an old investigation that entwined Choi and Lee, because what’s in it may have an impact on the new Chief Executive-elect Adrian Yip (Louis Koo Tin-lok), a glorious mash-up of Bowtie and also-ran John Tsang (the ’stache says it all).
Lest we forget, this is a Cold War movie, so some of the plot mechanics are creaky and there are plenty of moments of WTFery to go around, but when Leung drops in a powerful Hong Kong business family, led by patriarch Poon Chun-hang (Tse Kwan-ho, who seems to be filling Liu Kai-chi’s shoes, RIP), his missing son-in-law KT Wong (Carlos Chan Ka-lok), his entitled son Poon Chi-ngong (Wu Kang-ren), the current police commissioner Dickson Hui (Michael Chow Man-kin, wonderfully oily), desperate triad Tiger Fong (Samuel Pang King-chi) and all their secrets, lies and allegiances it makes for a tremendous cocktail of reflection on colonial legacy (fucking British) and entirely contemporary skewering of the unholy bond between public power and private enterprise (fucking everyone).
Cold War 1994 is as clever and sneaky (and occasionally explicit) as it is solid on the action front. Nothing ever comes of it, but Lau and Wong flirt with a fun A Moment of Romance / A Bittersweet Life-style opposite sides of the fence romance and because they’re fun together I’m here for it if they go that way in 1995 (to hell with canon). And this after a great restaurant gun battle (natch), a motorbike chase and smart-mouthed conversations in smoky temples. The action peaks, however in a utterly bonkers airport (a recreation of Kai Tak) chase that in fact includes a 747. It’s bananas and tense, and Leung will have a hard time topping himself after that.
This is the kind of big budget (by 2025 standards at least), mainstream filmmaking the industry has tried to hard to recapture in recent years, and which it has struggled to pull off not just because funds are drying up. But Leung (and Herman Yau in We’re Nothing At All) have cracked a code that filmmakers have been chipping away at for a decade and which could open the floodgates to a renaissance in truly engaging commercial art. It’s helps that the film has another murderer’s row of high profile local talent in bit parts and cameos that provide blockbuster cred. Fish Liew Chi-yu appears as a Poon scion with zero lines (da fuq?), Yuen Biao turns up as the legendary Lee elder, Cecilia Yip Tung is a triad boss, there’s Ho Ka-wai, Tai Bo, Karen Mok Man-wai, Jeffrey Ngai Tsun-sang, Peter Chan Charm-man, Mak Pui-tung, Locker Lam Ka-hei, the list goes on. But Cold War 1994 gets some extra juice from Aidan Gillen as the head of MI6 in Asia-Pacific, and Hugh Bonneville as a British cabinet minister who want to make sure the handover goes their way, even as they’re heading out the door. You can tell this is big ticket filmmaking because the white guys are played by actual actors and not a NET with a day off. How colonial.