The world’s most inept police force takes on a gang of criminals in the Hong Kong action film, Firestorm.
Billed as throwing logic out the window; the tagline for Firestorm isn’t lying as we see sloppy action sequences, cheesy dialogue and bland characters at centre stage for this high stakes film that follows super-serious Police Detective Lui (Andy Lau) as he tries to bring down a criminal mastermind, Cao (Hu Jun) and will use any means necessary to do so. Lui soon learns that to bring down these un-remorseful villains, he must break his own rules and take a leaf out of their book to do so. As we see him thwarted at every angle the detective falls further down the rabbit hole of desperation as he becomes obsessed with bringing the men to justice.
Firestorm really doesn’t start off that bad at all if you forgive the consistent cheesy dialogue, but as the film goes on it’s as if director Alan Yuen couldn’t help but take the film to higher levels of ridiculousness and insanity. Not even in the most cliched of Hollywood blockbusters do you see the police force, and in particular special forces, so completely useless at their jobs which at its most basic is simple: Aim, fire, kill the bad guy, but these Hong Kong special forces guys seem to get lost at step 1!
It’s hard to really know who this film is actually about. We open with Bong (Lam Ka Tung) getting out of prison and it looks like his lady friend, Yao (Yan Bing) is trying to set him on the right path, but he’s just so damn sleazy with an extremely punchable smug grin that he goes straight back to a life of crime. Then we shift to see Detective Lui and we pretty much follow his story apart from some intervals with an out of place, slow-paced and outright boring love story between Bong and Yao, before very oddly at the end having this film be about Bong’s redemption, even though by this point any normal human being watching the film would simply hate him, hate him for his punchable, smug grin.
Firestorm isn’t completely lost, however, as it pulls some real punches that make for uncomfortable viewing at times, in particular the incident which sets Detective Lui down his dark path nearly halfway through the film. Detective’s Lui’s actions are for uncomfortable viewing as it makes the audience challenge their own morals. His outright wrong actions are there not in a Hollywood, action hero, cool sort of way, but in a real-life, could you and would you go to these sorts of lengths to get justice. It’s a strong moral point in which the film can hang its hat on proudly. As well as boasting some truly unlikeable (in the best possible way) characters which all add up to the conundrum that we go through with our troubled Detective.
Perhaps with a little more of what made the film enjoyable, and less of the dodgy special effects and overuse of stock dialogue and slow motion accompanied with time lapses, the film could have been a more enjoyable experience, but then again Firestorm aims high in its objective and there’s nothing really wrong with that.
Rating: Sadly, a hit and miss action that could have been a film to match the exciting title, (5/10).
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