July 29, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Herman Yau
Cantonese with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Hong Kong and in Africa, the action film “Customs Frontline” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with some white people and black people) portraying the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department agents battle against a group of weapons smugglers led by mysterious and ruthless dealer.
Culture Audience: “Customs Frontline” will appeal primarily to people are fans of the movies headliners and action movies with mindless plots.
Awkward acting, a poorly written screenplay and an overcrowded cast make “Customs Frontline” a dud. This story about customs officials versus criminal smugglers tries to do too much but ends up with very little meaning. All the action scenes look fake.
Directed by Herman Yau, “Customs Frontline” (formerly titled “War Customised”) has almost no imagination because the outcome and the weak plot twists can be easily predicted long before they’re shown on screen. Eric Lee and Erica Li wrote the unimpressive screenplay, which is populated with hollow characters and dull dialogue. Making things worse, most of the acting in the movie is atrocious.
“Customs Frontline” tells the story of Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department agents going on the hunt for an elusive and mysterious arms smuggler named Dr. Raw (played by Amanda Strang), whose arsenal ranges from guns to bombs to submarines with missiles. Strang’s stiff and vacant acting as Dr. Raw is so pitifully bad, this character is unconvincing as someone who would even know how to use a toy gun, let alone have the type of massive supply of weapons that is supposed to make her a dangerous terrorist. And for a chief villain, Dr. Raw is not in the movie as much as you think she might be.
Instead, “Customs Frontline” has mostly generic and anonymous goons in showdowns with the customs agents. The movie is overpopulated with unnecessary characters who show up and then disappear in subplots that go nowhere. And needless to say, many scenes in this movie look rushed and jumbled.
The “heroes” of the story are a disjointed group of agents. Chow Ching-lai (played by Nicholas Tse) is the principled protagonist, whose boss and mentor Cheung Wan-nam (played by Jacky Cheung) has bipolar disorder. The movie’s depiction of this mental illness is problematic for how it plays up the worst clichés of bipolar disorder by having a lot of over-exaggerated acting.
A flashback scene shows a doctor telling Wan-nam that Wan-nam has a high EQ (emotional quotient, also known as emotional intelligence), but Wan-nam has bipolar disorder where he can self-harm when he’s in a manic state. And sure enough, the movie shows some of this self-harm later when Wan-nam gets some bad news and deliberately presses a hot iron on his left shoulder to burn himself. The self-harm gets worse.
Wan-nam’s girlfriend is Athena Siu (played by Karena Lam), who is the custom department’s assistant commissioner of customs and excise. Wan-nam’s demanding and disrespectful boss is Kwok Chi-keung (played by Francis Ng), the custom department’s assistant commissioner, who often belittles Wan-man. There are multiple scenes where Wan-nam gripes about Chi-keung to Athena, and they try to think of ways to make Wan-nam’s life easier on the job. “I’ll beat Kwok for you,” Athena tells Wan-nam.
Early on in the movie, agents from Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department find a unaccounted-for cargo ship that has arrived from Thailand and is filled with weapons that are believed to be stolen. When the agents go to investigate the ship, they find out too late that it’s a trap set by Dr. Raw. Several customs agents are killed by Dr. Raw’s thugs in this ambush, including Ching-lai’s ex-gilfriend Katie (played by Michelle Wai). By the way, do these “hero” customs agents know how to date anyone who isn’t a co-worker?
Not long after this massacre, a Thai intelligence officer named Ying (played by Michelle Wai) arrives from Thailand to investigate. She teams up with Ching-lai to do some undercover work. The movie shows them posing as journalists in Africa, where they visit the fictional country of Lokumoa and interview leaders who tell them about how dangerous illegal arms have been to the people in their country. Note to the “Customs Frontline” filmmakers: You don’t have to pretend to be a journalist to find out that information.
While in Africa, Yin and Ching-lai suddenly get caught in an explosion attack. It’s a laughably terrible scene with sloppy editing. At one point, Dr. Raw is hiding out in Egypt, where she utters more ridiculous lines while dressed as if she’s going to business cocktail party. Scene after scene is just all time-wasting nonsense that are often just an excuse to have mindless shoot-outs, explosions, ship crashes and fist fights.
During one of these fights, an opponent of Ching-lai asks him, “Why are you doing this?” He replies in a monotone voice, “It’s my duty.” When the opponent gets wheeled away by a medical responder, the opponent asks Ching-lai: “Why did you save me?” Ching-lai says in the same flat voice: “It’s my duty.” You can see better acting in a lot video games with computer-generated image characters.
“Customs Frontline” is loud and bombastic in all the wrong ways because the movie just isn’t interesting and is actually quite lazy when it comes to the story. The movie’s characters might as well be robots because they have the personalities of monotonous robots, except for the horrible depiction of Wan-nam’s bipolar disorder. “Customs Frontline” is one of those movies that is unlikely to be remembered by most people who see it unless anyone is unfortunate enough to get a headache from watching this noisy mess.
Well Go USA released “Customs Frontline” on July 19, 2024. The movie was released in Hong Kong on July 5, 2024.
