The 25th anniversary New York Asian Film Festival takes place from July 10th to July 26th. For details and showtimes, click here.
In anticipation of writing this review I actually went to Wikipedia to read the plot summary for the first two Cold War films. Ultimately, I fear this was a mistake; I’m pretty sure I now understand Cold War 1994 less than I did when I actualy watched it. Which seems like it should be impressive. But I’m not sure that it is.
Look, ignore me: I’m just having a little bit of fun at the expense of a movie that ultimately, I did have a decent time with. This, despite the fact that the movie aggressively declined to be both the thing I wanted it to be, or the thing it probably should have been in the first place. But it is what it is. And it falls to me to try and explain to you exactly what that is is.
We can start with this: Cold War 1994 is a prequel to the Cold War duology, which previously released entires in 2012 and 2016. It was shot back-to-back with a sequel to this prequel, Cold War 1995, to be released in 2027. So it doesn’t even do us the courtesy of resolving the dilemma it sets up in its opening moments. But I fear we’ll need to circle back to that later. There is much ground to cover, and by God, we’re going to cover it.
To the uninitiated, which technically includes myself, a brief summation of the Cold War series as it currently stands.
They’re a series of desnely plotted police thrillers involving the characters of Police Commisioner Lau, played by Aaron Kwok, and Deputy Commissioner M.B. Lee (Tony Leung), who find themselves trapped in a spiral of criminal conspiracy, often involving other cops. This prequel is no exception, though it is unique in being a prequel and a sequel, taking place after the events of the second film.
To recap the plot would be not so much an exercise in futility as a grand indulgence; one of the films biggest failings is that it often feels like its nothing but plot. But needs must. And so here we go.
The film takes place in two time periods: 2017, and 1994. In the 2017 timeline, newly elected Chief Executive Yip (Louis Koo, new to the series) wants to appoint M.B. Lee his new Secretary of Security. But no sooner does the announcement go out than Lee thwarts an assassination attempt in his own home and subsequently disappears. In an attempt to get to the bottom of things, Yip tasks Commissioner Lau with leading the investigation. To that end, Lay goes to senior counsel Oswald Kan (Chow Yun-fat) who manages to get ahold of previously sealed documents about a bothced kidnapping case from 194 that may shed some light on current events. And the 1994 storyline is, of course, the portrayal of those very events.
Now, if you’re excited to see such names as Koo, Leung, yun-Fat and Kwok.. best to temper your expectations. As you can probably tell from that synopsis, the 2017 segments are little more than a framing device; it wouldn’t be even remotely surprising if everybody involved shot all their scenes over the course of a single day. In fact, this applies to all the stars of yesteryear, the casting of whom are what drew me to the film in the first place. Besides the faux principals, there are cameos by luminaries like Karen Mok, Kent Cheng, Cecilia Yip, and even a brief one by a completely unrecognizable (to me) Yuen Biao. But none of them do much of anything at all. Hell, I’m not even sure Kent Cheng gets a single spoken line of dialogue.
They’re nice to see, but it does feel a bit like a bait-and-switch.
Instead, we spend much of our time in the 1994 storyline with Terrance Lau as the younger M.B. and… look, I’m not going to give the man a hard time here. He is working at a disadvantage in the sense that literally any actor playing the same character as Tony Leung would be at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, Lau makes for a bit of a limp protagonist. I mean, he’s fine, I guess. But this is the sort of movie where the plot takes precedence over everything. The dialgoe consists almost entirely of people explaining the plot to one another, or people explaining why they’re doing what the plot requires them to do to one another. And so it goes. But it is a very particular skill set to invest that sort of thing with any kind of emotional resonance and Lau, as sturdy a figure as he cuts, is a bit too green to be able to get there yet.
Rather, there’s a more interesting character here, that of Peter Choi, played by Daniel Wu. He’s a character from Cold War 2, where he was played by Chang Kuo-cho. Choi, I’m given to understand, was one of the antagonists of that second film, a corrupt ex-police commissioner who was once Lee’s mentor. The more interesting of the threads is his rather rapid descent into corruption and betrayal of Lee. In reading the Wikipedia page, one suspects this is the part that would have had the most resonance with fans of the earlier films, seeing how that relationship dissolved. But free of that context, it’s an intriguingly knotty dynamic, and Wu makes for an enjoyably detestable double dealer.
At this point it feels germaine to discuss my earlier statement about what I wanted the movie to be versus what it actually is. A movie named Cold War 1994 put me in mind of the golden age of Hong Kong action cinema. And certainly, the presence (however fleeting) of so many lumnaires from that period would seem to point in that direction. But a movie from tat era would never in a milion years give this much attention to its plot. It would be to busy cranking out insane action sequences. And that right there, is the biggest flaw of all: there is nothing wrong with this movie that wouldn’t have been easy to ignore if only there had been more action, and it had been significantly better.
And look, it’s not about the digital anture of it all; as much as I might wish it, it’s not 1994 anymore. Even in Hong Kong they’re no longer allowed to throw stuntmen around like a rag doll in a tumble dryer. The movie actually reminds me of the post-handover Hong Kong movies, where the budgets got bigger and the action got slicker and more “Hollywood”. Those movies have gained a bit of charm with age, as these things often do… but it’s not a moment in time that I think abyone would particularly want to see come back. In fact, the best action sequence, a motorcycle chase, manages to toss out some decent gags that would have killed back in 1994– both with the audience and in terms of the fate of whoever would have attempted to do it. CGI has its uses, unfortunately.
But at the end of the day, director Longman Leung, who ha been behind the camera for all the entires in the series thus far, mostly seems to be including the scenes out of a sense of obligation. They’re diverting enough but only occasionally get the blood pumping. But he seems way more invested in the many many scenes of people sitting in rooms, cryptically intimating that someone or other can’t be trusted. To each their own, I suppose, but with all the ingredient involved I don’t know how you can fault me for wishing for something a little more explosive.
That said… while the 1994 of it all didn’t lead to the heroic blodshed revival I might have hoped for, there was another point of interest there worth mentioning, and that is it’s actual approach to the era. For obvious reasons, the contemporary movies of that time weren’t really allowed to address the impending handover except in general, oblique terms. But this movie is very much about the tensions of the occupation. The fulcrimof the kidnapping plot involves a powerful Hong Kong family whose patriarch Sir William Poon (Tse Kwan-ho, giving the best performance in the film and it’s not even particularly close) is determined to completely free his family and his empire from British interests, and whether or not events will ever actually allow this to happen. The final scenes have a bracing cynicism and amorality from even it’s most heroic-coded characters that you would never in a million years see back then. And that part is pretty damn interesting.
The rest of it? Less so.
This whole thing is so weird, up to and including the non-ending. The 1994 storyline is resolved in its entirety, but the 2017 remains a cliffhanger to draw people back in. But what’s weird about that is that the movie has a mid-credits scene setting up the sequel… where there’s another disastrous case that took place in 1995 that will finalltreveal all.
So what the fuck were we even doing here? What was all this for?!?
What is this series???
