Nicholas Tse Archives – CULTURE MIX

July 29, 2024

by Carla Hay

Nicholas Tse in “Customs Frontline” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)

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.

Jacky Cheung in “Customs Frontline” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)

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.

September 1, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Raging Fire”

Directed by Benny Chan

Cantonese with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Hong Kong, the action flick “Raging Fire” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the middle-class, wealthy and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: An upstanding cop battles against a former protégé, who leads a gang that works for a corrupt and wealthy businessman.

Culture Audience: “Raging Fire” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Donnie Yen, the late filmmaker Benny Chan and Chinese action flicks that have predictable plots.

Nicholas Tse in “Raging Fire” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)

“Raging Fire” delivers everything you might expect of a formulaic action flick, which means that it delivers nothing surprising or innovative at all. This is strictly a movie for people who just want to see a lot of choreographed violence and don’t care much about having an intriguing story where viewers are challenged to solve mysteries along with the main characters. And that’s a disappointment, considering the protagonist is a police officer who’s been given the task of finding and capturing an elusive, murderous gang and the corrupt businessman who’s hired these thugs.

“Raging Fire” is the last movie directed by Benny Chan, who died of nasopharyngeal cancer in 2020, at the age of 58. It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s certainly not his best. And at 126 minutes, “Raging Fire” is a little too long, considering there’s not much of a plot and the movie has a little too much repetition of similar scenarios. It’s the same old story that dozens of other movies have already had: an ethical cop leader leads a team to take down a group of criminals. And there’s a wealthy person who wants to take over the world—or at least dominate a certain part of the world and get richer by having other people do the dirty work. Yawn.

In “Raging Fire,” which takes place in Hong Kong, the cop in charge is Cheung Sung-bong (played by Donnie Yen), also known as Bong, who works for Hong Kong’s Regional Crime Unit. Bong has a reputation as a fearless leader who can get the job done well. He has an excellent track record of catching major criminals. And therefore, you know exactly how this movie is going to end before it even starts.

Yau Kong-ngo (played by Nicholas Tse), also known as Ngo, is Bong’s former protégé who has gone rogue and formed a gang of criminals. In the beginning of the “Raging Fire,” Bong and his team have raided a warehouse lair of drug dealers. However, Ngo becomes a masked interloper who creates chaos in this raid when he becomes a sniper who kills off some of the people in the building.

Ngo is ruthless and insists on unwavering loyalty from everyone in his gang, which consists primarily of other former cops. Coke Ho (played by Ken Law) and Wong (played by Brian Siswojo) are like the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of Ngo’s gang because these two are very close to each other and practically inseparable. There’s also Chiu (played by Henry Mak), who is self-conscious about the burn scar on the right side of his face and is often teased about his scar by other people. Other members of the gang are Mok Yik-chuen (played by Yu Kang) and Chu Yuk-ming (played by German Cheung).

People on Bong’s team include Yuen Ka-po, also known as Beau (played by Patrick Tam), who is Bong’s superior officer. Bong’s Regional Crime Unit subordinates are Chow Chi-chun (played by Deep Ng), token female Turbo Lui (played by Jeana Ho), Kwan Chung-him (played by Bruce Tong) and Cho Ning (played by Angus Yeung). These cops do not have distinct personalities and are just there to literally be backup characters in fight scenes.

A rich bank mogul named Fok Siu-tong (played by Kwok Fung), who owns HK Fortune Banking, is financing Ngo’s gang and is calling the shots in whatever crimes they commit. “Raging Fire” has double crosses, a crystal meth drug bust worth about $48 million, a past kidnapping, a criminal trial and a hostage situation crammed in between the expected fights with fists, guns, knives and bombs.

As is usually the case in action flicks like “Raging Fire,” it’s all about the men, since women are usually reduced to subservient roles. Bong has a pregnant wife named Anna Lam (played by Qin Lan), who’s not much more than the stereotypical “worried wife at home” of the movie’s action hero. Chiu has a mean-spirited girlfriend named Bonnie (played by Leung Ying Ting Rachel), who isn’t in the movie long for the most predictable reason in a movie that doesn’t value women very much.

The fight scenes in “Raging Fire” certainly have a lot of energy but not much imagination. The hostage scene is beyond ridiculous. And as for the movie’s dialogue and acting, let’s just say that this movie is far from award-worthy. “Raging Fire” could be just silly fun for viewers. But considering that these action stars and filmmakers have done much better movies, “Raging Fire” is unfortunately a misfire that will be most-remembered as director Chan’s last film.

Well Go USA released “Raging Fire” in select U.S. cinemas on August 13, 2021. The streaming service Hi-YAH! will premiere the movie on October 22, 2021. The movie’s release date on digital and Blu-ray is on November 23, 2021.

Tag: Nicholas Tse

Review: ‘Customs Frontline,’ starring Jacky Cheung, Nicholas Tse, Karena Lam, Cya Liu and Francis Ng

Review: ‘Raging Fire,’ starring Donnie Yen and Nicholas Tse