Derailed
It’s hard to tell what’s more terrifying. Looking at ‘Moscow Mission’ or being tied to train tracks.
Moscow mission
Director: Herman Yau • Writer: Chen Daming
Starring: Zhang Hanyu, Andy Lau, Huang Xuan, Janice Man, Jason Gu
China • 2hrs 8mins
Opens Hong Kong January 25 • IIB
Grade: D+
Andy Lau Tak-wah is not having a good winter at the movies. His latest misfire (which most of us would call a paycheque performance), Moscow Mission | 莫斯科行動 (occasionally credited as the full 93国际列车大劫案：莫斯科行动) has him playing Vasily, a mid-’90s huckster from China living in Moscow and making a living selling fake passports and stolen watches to mid-level thugs as a way to stay close to old pal “D”, or Miao Qingshan (Huang Xuan), who’s got Vasily’s daughter locked up someplace. Vasily was an engineer back in the old country and when he got caught trafficking, I don’t know, Levi’s and Chanel 5 through a tunnel between Hong Kong and Shenzhen he skipped bail and ran to Russia. It doesn’t matter, because all you need to know is he’s now in Moscow with D and his crew. His best pal there is Zhenzhen, AKA Li Suzhen (Janice Man Wing-san, who proved she had some sass in Lost in the Stars and deserves much better than an abused houseplant role), a retired prostitute working with her beauhunk, D’s “brother” Miao Ziwen (Jason Gu Jiacheng), and helping them rob the K3 (?) transcontinental train. Evidently every passenger on this clunker carries fat stacks of US greenbacks, and Miao and Co. want in on the action.
A shambolic jalopy of a film, Moscow Mission is another message movie designed to celebrate law and order, and create a fantasy world in which Chinese and Russian legal and social processes seamlessly entwine and everyone riding the rails between Beijing and Moscow is safer for it. Outside of a fairly strong opening heist sequence – the one that gets Beijing’s attention, lest it ruin China’s international image – and a sewer system motorcycle chase, Moscow Mission is Hong Kong schlock director Herman Yau Lai-to at his laziest. Absent is the gleeful action exploitation vibe, replaced by dull soft power righteousness and predictability. That it’s based on a true story is irrelevant.
Heeeelp meeeee
Uh huh, that’s right. Set in 1993, a time period that oozes dramatic possibilities, Moscow Mission doesn’t bother letting the dynamics that were prevalent in both countries at the time seep into the story. Of course, China was barrelling towards a glorious market economy and Russia was gripped by post-Soviet chaos and looming elections. Fools. But these are Chinese thugs, so being good global citizens, the security office dispatches Captain Cui (Zhang Hanyu, always compelling – can someone give this guy a real role?) to fix this mess and extradite the criminals back to China for trial. Okay. In Moscow, Cui and his crew, which includes the fresh-from-the-academy-moving-target Sun (Bai Narisu) and Putonghua-speaking Russian cop-type dude Gang (Temur Manisashvili), get a facilitator in former KGB, now FSB agent Sergey (Andrey Lazarev). Miao, of course, is the worst kind of scum – he’s also a rapist, twice – and unnecessarily nasty. Awww… but he’s tragic too. He might have been a musician had his kind and loving father not dropped dead when he was a child and his mother remarried a brute. Huang’s choices regarding Miao’s characterisation include snarling, cackling, and snarling. Plus, he’s not a real Chinese man. His girlfriend is a blonde, Marina (Zina Blahusova), with too much ill-suited pink lipstick.
Now, there’s room in here to explore how people who take up (or get reeled into) organised and malicious crime as a career in the wake of social and economic upheaval, and even flirting with that could have put some mean on these bones. Surprise, surprise, Zhenzhen started working as a prostitute thanks to a sick parent, and it’s hinted that Vasily’s fugitive status is about more than stolen watches. Hey, there may even be a story with what appears to be Russia’s worst hitman (seriously buddy couldn’t hit the side of a barn). Yau has waded into the social weeds before (From the Queen to the Chief Executive, Whispers and Moans) but this is not that Yau. This Yau finds a way to get an old East German fighter jet into the plot. Because oligarchs I guess. But even that Yau has its gonzo charms. This is just bloated and messy, clinical in a way that screams screenplay by checklist (written by Chen Daming), and entirely predictable – gee, do you think Lau the traditional good guy is going to find redemption? I’m not really interested in going to Moscow anyway. — DEK