Charlie Yeung | Through the Shattered Lens

As soon as I finished watching COLD WAR (2012), I went to the fridge, grabbed myself a refreshing beverage and immediately started up COLD WAR II (2016). The original film ends on a cliffhanger, so I was excited to see what happens next!

COLD WAR II opens right after the events of the first film, resolves its pressing cliffhanger in the first 20 minutes, and then doubles down on the intrigue and political power plays that defined the original. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, so as not to take away some of the fun surprises. I will say that most sequels go bigger by doubling body counts or explosions, but in this film the conspiracies just get a lot deeper, and the political manipulations start reaching for much broader power. I still found the situations to be interesting thanks to the intense atmosphere of the film and the strong performances of the cast.

In the roles of Sean Lau and M.B. Lee, Aaron Kwok and Tony Leung Ka-fai continue to excel, but circumstances quickly erode some of the goodwill that was created between their characters at the end of the first film. This temporarily creates the risk that this follow-up could end up feeling like a retread of their heated rivalry in part 1. Higher, even more personal stakes helped alleviate some of that concern.

The best thing that happens for COLD WAR II is the addition of Chow Yun-fat to the cast in the important supporting role of Oswald Kan. Kan is a former judge and brilliant legal mind who leads a special committee investigating the fallout from the events of the first film. The middle section of the film features a series of scenes with Chow in intense confrontations with both Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok. It’s especially fun seeing Chow mix it up with Tony as their careers go way back to working with each other in classics like PRISON ON FIRE (1987) and A BETTER TOMORROW III (1989). These scenes freshen up the material, but they also connect us emotionally to Hong Kong cinema of the golden years through one of its biggest, most honorable stars. Chow gives the film a moral center as Oswald Kan seems free from the ethical compromises that our other main characters are having to make. It’s an impressive and charismatic turn from Hong Kong’s all-time greatest leading man.

Just as in the first film, there aren’t a lot of action scenes, but the ones we have are bigger and even more impressive. There’s an action sequence in a tunnel about an hour into the film that blew me away with its execution and intensity. Its resolution also surprised me, which is not always easy to do. Still, this incredible scene serves the plot well, providing clear and obvious motivation for the actions of each of the main characters throughout the remainder of the film.

COLD WAR II follows the motto of most sequels to box office smashes… “Go big or go home!” While the plot becomes even more complicated this time around, the continued excellence in the performances, especially with the addition of Chow Yun-Fat, helps to provide the solid emotional payoffs needed to keep the series moving forward. With the excellent action set pieces also adding to the fun, the filmmakers have managed to create a sequel that I rate just as high as the original. Now, bring on COLD WAR 1994!

COLD WAR II is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Tubi, PlutoTV, Plex, and the Roku Channel!

As I continue revisiting various movies that feature Chow Yun-Fat during his birthday month of May, I decided I would revisit his work in the COLD WAR franchise, specifically COLD WAR II from 2016. The problem is that I hadn’t watched COLD WAR (2012) since it was released on Blu ray well over a decade ago, so I couldn’t remember much about it. And when you consider that another sequel, COLD WAR 1994 (2026), was released to boffo box office in China just last week, now seemed like a perfect time for another viewing of the original.

Set in Hong Kong, Asia’s “safest big city,” COLD WAR begins with the disappearance of a police emergency response van, as well as all five officers on board. We soon meet deputy commissioners Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok) and M.B. Lee (Tony Leung Ka-fai) who have vastly different ideas of how the situation should be handled. Lau wants to take a calm, measured, and analytical approach that prioritizes public safety, while Lee wants to take a bulldozer to the city and stop at nothing to find the officers and punish those responsible. Admittedly, Lee’s motivation is clouded by the fact that his only son Joe (Eddie Peng) is one of the missing officers. This setup kicks off a battle between dedicated cops, ambitious politicians, and motivated terrorists in a world where saying the wrong thing could cost you your career. Depending on which side you’re on, it could even cost you your life.

Aaron Kwok and Tony Leung Ka-fai are excellent as the rival deputy commissioners trying to manage the crisis while also outmaneuvering each other. Kwok plays the colder and more procedural Sean Lau, who sparingly shows the cracks in his armor. It’s a nicely controlled performance by Kwok, making the scenes where we see his humanity that much stronger. Leung’s M.B. Lee is more old-school, driven by instincts and results. His intense performance provides life to the film, and he was rewarded for his work with that year’s Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor.

The primary intrigue of the film is provided by the tense meetings and phone calls between these men and their teams, as well as the political fallout of those standoffs. It’s strange for a Hong Kong crime film, but the actual retrieval of the missing cops comes across as secondary, and it still works. First time directors Sunny Luk and Longman Leung really like their dialogue scenes and trust the audience enough to let these moments carry the suspense for large chunks of time. Imagine that happening in a Hollywood action film?!!

Even with all the dialogue and posturing, the action scenes in COLD WAR are exciting when they do come. There’s a freeway shootout where we get to see that agent Lau has some incredible shooting and survival skills to go along with stoic demeanor. The final action sequences hit hard, featuring a step up in the graphic violence in comparison to what we’d seen up to that point in the film. The players and the stakes had been firmly established, so when violence does erupt, I was invested in its outcome, whether it be good or bad.

COLD WAR gets an easy recommendation from me. I thought it was well acted and well directed, with enough meaningful action to remind me why I like Hong Kong movies in the first place. It was also fun to see so many familiar faces in important roles, including cameos from the likes of Andy Lau and Michael Wong. A word of warning though, you will need to pay attention to the film if you want to enjoy it. So much of the fun comes from the tension created by the situations and the dialogue, so this is not a viewing experience designed to co-exist with a lot of other distractions.