Shock Wave - Ultimatum a Hong Kong

The good thing about a lot of Herman Yau's movies is good or bad, they don't drag. He understands action is his strength and he doesn't waste much time in character development or melodrama setup. And I believe for the most part the movie delivers on the.fast paced action. Andy Lau's character is much deeper than his usual HK action hero setup and surprisingly, I think he did a good job with it too. Sean Lau OTOH, has very little to work with for his character and when the movie ends you can barely remember much about his character other than it just keep the plot going.

But assuming most audience are in the theatre for the action I think a few of the bomb defusing scenes do keep you on the edge of your seats. Now there are things that make no sense logically in the movie (for starter, just because you jump into a swimming pool it doesn't mean you can survive a jump from 10 stories high), and the plot twists also makes no sense if you come to think of it - the police chiefs who you told the audience just 10 minutes ago are too chicken to take the risk and do the right things, all of a sudden buys into a super risky proposal which they have nothing to gain from. But just forget logic and fine, you can at least enjoy the twists and the action ... and the action scenes don't disappoint ...

... with the exception of 1 major problem : the subway train scenes (it is not a spoiler, you see that in the first min of the movie). That is, by far, the WORST CG I have seen in a movie since maybe the late 90's. What the heck was that? The movie seems to have overachieve with a limited budget and the result was pretty disastrous visually. I don't think that is acceptable even for a TV series in 2021, never mind a blockbuster movie. I tried to overlook but it was a pretty glaring letdown.

All in all, good action flick with a weak plot that makes little sense, a few misses here and there but it's still a solid 7/10 to me.