City's action movies continue to draw crowds on mainland
A scene from Raging Fire. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
An old-school Hong Kong action thriller made a surprise name for itself this summer simply by meeting all expectations.
On Aug 26, three days after the first anniversary of director Benny Chan's death, his final feature Raging Fire became the 89th film screened on the Chinese mainland to take more than 1 billion yuan (US$155 million) at the box office.
By Sunday, it had earned 1.2 billion yuan and topped the box office for Chinese-language action movies this year. Cinemas have extended the screening period for the movie to Oct 30.
The movie tells a familiar story of an honest cop named Bong, played by Donnie Yen, clashing with Ngor, a former colleague, portrayed by Nicholas Tse. The latter swears to take revenge against Bong and the entire police force after former colleagues testify against him, leading to Ngor being imprisoned for beating a suspect to death.
The movie's director Benny Chan (right) and cinematographer Edmond Fung. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The film scored 7.5 points out of 10 among more than 246,000 viewers on the mainland movie review platform Douban.
However, high expectations for renowned director Chan's swan song ended in disappointment for some die-hard fans.
One reviewer, who gave the film six points out of 10 on Douban, said, "It was barely a satisfactory work from Benny Chan … and this saddens me."
Other fans said the film was "up to the usual standard", with Hong Kong action movies being in the doldrums for a number of years.
Liu Yifan, a movie critic based on the mainland, said, "Raging Fire is a real, authentic Hong Kong film, the likes of which haven't been seen for a long time."
The movie is typical of Chan's often-violent scenes, showcased by sensational explosions, Liu said, adding that such settings are even more evident in this film. Moviegoers can feel "a strong sense of catharsis" in the storytelling and camerawork, according to Liu.
A poster for Raging Fire in Beijing. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The film marked the end of Chan's long and successful feature movie career, which began in 1990 with A Moment of Romance. He made his mainland debut in 2003 with Heroic Duo, before he and Jackie Chan collaborated on New Police Story the following year. Over the next few years, Benny Chan kept the genre flying high, along with stars such as Andy Lau, Louis Koo and Daniel Wu.
Diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer while filming Raging Fire in 2019, Benny Chan died during post-production on Aug 23 last year. He was 58.
His last post on Sina Weibo, which celebrated completion of the film on Aug 7, 2019, drew hundreds of comments including: "Thank you for the great film"; "We miss you"; and "May you rest in peace".
Many posts on the official account for Raging Fire called for a longer version of the movie after reports said that about an hour of footage had been removed from Benny Chan's draft version.
One viewer, who gave the film full marks, said, "Benny Chan dedicated his whole life to defending the glory of Hong Kong action films."
Danny Lee, Hong Kong crime film director and actor. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
New situation
Liu said film fans sometimes yearn too much for the glory days of Hong Kong cinema in the 20th century. In the early 1990s, the city produced an average of 175 movies annually, 4 times the number last year.
The boom in the 1980s and '90s coincided with the ready availability of investors and talent, access to markets at home and abroad－and more important－a lack of competitors. As these factors have changed significantly in the past 30 years, decline was inevitable, according to Liu.
He called for a "reasoned view "of the current situation, adding that it is remarkable that Hong Kong can still produce several memorable films each year.
There has been a noticeable decline in iconic action films made in the city, which brought actors such as Bruce Lee and Jet Li to the world stage. Hong Kong is no longer a place where performers are willing to risk life and limb for a stunning shot, Liu said.
A poster for Shock Wave 2. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
To keep moviegoers in suspense, filmmakers may have to work harder on intellectual engagement and elements of surprise, he said.
Raging Fire reprises the days of the fighting spirit. Yen, who starred in the Ip Man films－a series of Hong Kong biographical martial arts movies centered on grandmaster Ip Man (1893-1972)－relaunches his battle in a modern city. He demonstrates classic impromptu use of a bulletproof vest and a plastic bag soaked in sewage, and even uses piano keys as weapons.
In a recent bloopers video, Yen was captured telling fellow actor Benjamin Lam to punch him harder during a fight scene in a sewer to achieve a better shot. Yen said he felt dizzy afterward.
The film's links to a classic crime story also contributed to moody cinematography from Edmond Fung, who said complex and dangerous scenes featuring car chases, gunfights and explosions were designed to have maximum impact. These scenes called for concentration, dedication and precise teamwork.
Fung said that early one morning, the actors and crew of Raging Fire were pressed for time, as they needed to complete a scene in which a police squad rested and chatted after a wild night of pursuit.
A poster for Bullets Over Summer. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
He and Benny Chan used a police vehicle prop, with monitors on the dashboard, and steadily drove through actors and actresses on the set, as performers read their lines.
"This way, we got the best sequence as quickly as we could," said the renowned cameraman behind New Dragon Gate Inn (1992) and Operation Red Sea (2018)－the seventh highest-grossing film in China with 3.65 billion yuan.
Kinson Loo, CEO of Z CAM in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, whose cameras are widely used in action scenes, said anyone who visited a movie crew on set would be impressed by Hong Kong filmmakers' flexibility and working spirit. Loo has worked with film producers around the world.
Loo said crews react to unexpected situations extremely quickly and take the minimum amount of time to reshuffle a schedule, reprioritize and relocate.
Director Wong Jing said Hong Kong filmmakers always make every effort to do their best. Martial arts have been "borrowed" by many filmmakers overseas, mostly for digital effects. "Audiences still find it different seeing our actors in real action," he said.
"I never believed that Hong Kong cinema had died. It's been here all the time, being welcomed by some. We make small breakthroughs one film at a time."
A scene from Cold War. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Memorable villain
Fung said Raging Fire would not have been a success if it had been a "popcorn action movie", adding that it takes a step forward in reflecting on and discussing humanity.
In the movie, Ngor's last line, a question to Bong, resonates with many viewers: "If you had chased Coke (the suspect killed by Tse's character) that day, would our destinies have been reversed?"
One comment posted on Hong Kong's film information platform read: "It's a hard question to answer. It's not as simple as always being moral and upright. Knowing our weaknesses as such, we must keep in mind the need to think independently and remind ourselves of the difference between right and wrong."
When the movie was released on the mainland, the number of mentions, reading about and interaction with Tse on Sina Weibo rose by 500 percent in a day to more than 770,000, well ahead of fellow star Yen and searches for the film's title.
Reeve Wong, a film critic based in Hong Kong, said that after a four-year absence from the big screen, Tse's return brought a memorable villain to the cinema.
Kinson Loo (right), CEO of Z CAM, poses with Donnie Yen during a visit to the set of Raging Fire. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Over the years, Hong Kong filmmakers have persisted with this classic genre, the critic said. Viewers were riveted by the power struggles between two deputy commanders in Cold War, which debuted in 2012. They were also shocked when terrorist bombs in Shock Wave 2 (2020) destroyed Hong Kong.
Starring Andy Lau, Shock Wave 2, which grossed more than 1.3 billion yuan, tells the story of a former bomb disposal officer who loses his memory at a terrorist bombing site. The hero is later named as the prime suspect in multiple bombings.
Lau's character swings between good and evil, epitomizing Hong Kong police thrillers that tug at viewers' heartstrings, Wong said. Such conflicts are best exemplified in the Infernal Affairs trilogy, with a policeman and a gangster working undercover in each other's camps.
Wong believes the police thriller will make its next breakthrough in its perception of humanity.
"There is nothing more powerful than mining the treasures of humanity through one's struggle with the outside world," Wong added.
Danny Lee, who is among Hong Kong's earliest crime film directors and actors, said there is now a chance for police thrillers to focus more on storytelling and character, rather than action.
This shift would mark a return to the starting point, instead of being a new approach, Lee said. Crime films in the 1960s and '70s tended to focus on community offenses, involving police who were poorly educated and criminals living in violent neighborhoods.
"What matters in such stories is what the police were thinking, what the villains were thinking," he said.
Edmond Fung (left) shoots a scene from the movie. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Lee's award-winning film Law with Two Phases (1984) offered a fresh, real-life approach to creating Hong Kong cop dramas. He plays a dedicated officer who accidentally kills a young boy in a gunfight with a seasoned bank robber－experiencing unjust treatment until he apprehends the criminal to clear his name.
New filmmakers should keep their feet on the ground, start with simple stories, and tell them well, said Lee, adding that before making big-budget commercial films such as Raging Fire, Benny Chan won the trust of audiences and investors with his hard work and talent.
On Aug 13, during a Hong Kong screening of Wilson Yip's 1999 film Bullets Over Summer at Tai Kwun Center for Heritage and Arts, many audience members said they had gained from the struggling characters a sense of cynicism and pessimism in society during the post-1997 Asian financial crisis, which they could relate to.
As audience members left the theater, they were told by organizers to watch out for a long flight of stairs and a small shop next door.
The stairs and shop appeared in the film's first scene, when the store was robbed－introducing Francis Ng and Louis Koo's characters as the responding officers.
Since COVID-19 travel restrictions were imposed, mainland fans of Raging Fire have been unable to visit Hong Kong locations used for the movie. These include a parking lot in Kennedy Town, where Yen leaped from a high rise to chase Tse fleeing on a motorcycle, and Cha Kwo Ling, where police battle the underworld all night.
Peking Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, was also used for scenes in which the gangsters are besieged by police－although many of these sequences were shot in a studio backlot.
One day, such locations could again be thronged with tourists eager to relive a fascinating crime story.
