The White Storm
Benny Chan
The story: Tin (Sean Lau Ching Wan), Wai (Nick Cheung) and Chow (Louis Koo) are three friends who grew up together and then signed up to be cops. Tin rises through the ranks and is senior to Wai, while Chow has to tough it out as an undercover mole for a drug lord. As they seek to bring down kingpin Eight-faced Buddha (Lo Hoi Pang) who operates in Thailand, friendships and loyalties are tested.

Oh no, not another drug movie, was my first thought.
Louis Koo played a weaselly drug peddler earlier this year in Drug War while Sean Lau Ching Wan and Nick Cheung have been on both sides of the cop-crook divide in other films such as Overheard (2009) and Nightfall (2012).
They have even teamed up in various combinations, though this marks the first time all three actors are in a film together.
But despite my initial reservations, The White Storm turned out to be a crackerjack of a movie which managed to be surprising in a well-worn genre.
It could have been another generic drug bust movie, but director and co-writer Benny Chan (New Police Story, 2004) ups the stakes by grounding the film with strong characters and extreme moral dilemmas.
The three seasoned actors inhabit their characters easily and also play off one another well.
Koo is the frustrated undercover mole, Chow, who is tired of living a double life. He lives in fear of picking up the wrong mobile phone and saying the wrong thing and just wants to be with his pregnant wife.
Lau is his superior, Tin, who is caught between wanting to protect his friend and pressure from his higher-ups to go after bigger fish – which means that Chow would have to remain as a mole.
And Cheung is the peace-maker, Wai, sandwiched between the other two and trying his best to keep their friendship from fraying as well as the mission from going under.
The film throws up some interesting questions.
What does it really take to motivate an undercover cop to stick it out?
Is a sense of duty enough or does there need to be something more personal given the sacrifices one is asked to make?
Later on, one of the three friends is put in an impossible situation of choosing who to save and, hence, who to sacrifice. Better yet, the movie examines the consequences of that fateful decision and how things sour after that.
Chan also packs in bursts of adrenaline rush in the action sequences ranging from a showdown in an abandoned building to an attack by helicopters in Thailand.
A pity then that the packed-with-gunplay finale is stretched out too long.
Right up till then though, the film has you in a firm grip.
(ST)