Motorway
Soi Cheang
The story: Cheung (Shawn Yue) is a young-punk cop with a taste for speed while his partner Lo (Anthony Wong) is just looking forward to retirement. When ace getaway driver Jiang (Guo Xiaodong), who had previously tangled with Lo, resurfaces, it is up to Cheung to stop him in his tracks.
Someone has clearly been watching Drive (2011), the oh-so-cool crime thriller by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn.
While the magnetic getaway driver played by Ryan Gosling was the focus of that film, Motorway takes a more conventional route by setting up the good cops against the bad robbers.
Other familiar elements here include the odd-couple pairing between the cops played by Yue and Wong.
When Yue needs advice on how to rev up his skills so that he can make an impossibly tight corner, no prizes for guessing who takes on the Yoda-mentor role.
And then there are the driving-as-life metaphors which tend to be rather heavy-handed.
Where director Soi Cheang (Accident, 2009) excels is in his use of Hong Kong locations.
The city’s distinctive warren of narrow one-way streets is used to great effect when Cheung pursues Jiang down darkened alleys. And watch how Jiang slips out of the law’s grasp with some nifty driving.
Later on, there is an epic race-off as cars chase one another down twisty mountainous roads with hairpin turns and somehow, Jiang goes from being the pursued to the pursuer.
The final showdown is cleverly set in a parking lot where columns restrict one’s line of sight and being able to drive fast is not quite as important as being skilled.
While the film might not be quite as fetishistic as, say, the Fast And Furious flicks, Cheang does manage to work in loving close-ups of sleek-looking mechanical parts pumping away smoothly and gauge needles swinging seductively.
Wong is reliably dependable as the older and wiser cop who has seen it all while there is not much for Yue, so good in Love In A Puff (2010), to do here but glower and look intense.
Guo (Summer Palace, 2006) adds gravitas to the role of Jiang but can only do so much with a thinly written character.
It is a pity that the story is rather bare and does not pack much in the way of surprises.
The female characters are also given short shrift and Barbie Hsu’s love-interest doctor is awkwardly superfluous.
But it is still satisfying to watch Cheung fulfil his destiny as a Jedi-knight driver and become one with the wheel.
(ST)