[Review] Shock Wave (6/10)

 

Title - Shock Wave
Studio - Bona Film Group, Infinitus Entertainment, Xiao Mi Pictures, Tencent Penguin Pictures, Ying Ming Film, Sublime Media, Universe Entertainment, Tao Piao Piao
Starring - Andy Lau, Wu Jiang, Philip Keung, Felix Wong, Lee Kwok Lun, Felix Lok, Wan Yeung Ming, Jia Song, Ron Ng
Writer - Erica Lee, Herman Yau
Director - Herman Yau
Release - 5 May 2017

It is a wonder that Andy Lau, who is pushing 60 years old, is still playing characters like this that seemed to be in his late 30s or early 40s. And he certainly still looks the part, which is even a bigger wonder.

But his acting skills has just gotten better with age. And this movie was all about his acting to sell every frame. 

And to have a great supporting cast of Hong Kong cinema veterans really added to selling the drama here, especially Philip Keung who has also been in the business for decades and have gotten better as well.

Unfortunately, the weakest link here was the female character - only one, portrayed also quite poorly by Jia Song. Is Hong Kong cinema still bad at writing female characters? This movie would have not missed anything had this character not existed.

While being superior in the acting front, there were still a lot of holes in the writing. Some scenes were threw in there for no apparent reason, other than piling on to the long runtime. 

There was a scene with the hand grenade that made no sense. We've all seen in much older movies that as long as you keep the long clutch pressed down, you can hold the grenade as long as you want after the pin has been pulled. And, you can even pass it to another person to hold on to it without it going off. So there was really no reason for Jia's character to be holding on to it at all. 

And that scene made no sense from the antagonist's point of view to torture Andy Lau's character when he clearly wants to inflict destruction and pain, than to have her survive. In the immediate previous scenario, he just killed a young police officer which played to great emotional effect. And that was a much dire situation on a random person.

Then there was the completely random accident that only paralyzed the antagonist's brother while everyone else had minor cuts and bruises. And that led to another big plot point.

But action wise, it was good fun even though the special affects were quite bad, and the movie was too long.