Full alert

After the failure of his first Hollywood film, ‘Maximum Risk’, Lam returned to Hong Kong to shoot this $13 million action film. A claustrophobic police thriller set just after the handover of Hong Kong to China, ‘Full Alert’ revives the ‘film bleu’ tradition of Hong Kong cop and gangster films, its belligerent energy recalling the sense of anarchy in Hong Kong films of the eighties. Inspector Pao is a grizzled, jaded veteran cop who has seen it all in his years with the Hong Kong police. After a vicious murderer escapes to Taiwan, Pau vows to track him down. To him he represents a new kind of criminal— smart, canny, ambitious and vicious— a man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. As in Michael Mann’s ‘Heat’ (1996) to which ‘Full Alert’ has been compared, the cop and the robber are set up as a pair of compelling twins/opposites driven to battle each other. They increasingly come to resemble each other in motive and character as the film progresses. Cast includes Lau Ching-Wan and Francis Ng. In Cantonese with English and Mandarin subtitles.