Explosive City is not so much a crime drama as it is an assorted mess of repetition, incoherence and plot holes. The intention seems to be the next “Infernal Affairs”, instead coming across as a poorly scripted, contrived example of generic Hong Kong cinema.
Infernal Affairs is not wholly original, but it is a remarkable piece of HK film making as it takes the gloss, glamour and panache of Hollywood, and mixes it with all the elements of crime films in the Far East with a few of its own tricks. It’s superbly accomplished and wonderful to watch (the same praise cannot be levelled at the prequel and sequel).
Explosive City tries very carefully to replicate this, but still trying to keep itself original and refreshing. It instead comes across as a B-movie Hollywood crime drama, replacing Americans with Chinese actors, and setting the film in Hong Kong. It’s quite abysmal, and hilarious. However, the hilarity is not limited to bad acting, but also the cringe worthy experience of watching this nonsense.
The story is convoluted and full of plot holes. There is a suggested twist, but it’s about as much as a twist as wringing out your wet clothes in the rain. Said twist is about as original and as interesting as finding out the horse you killed with your Land Rover was actually a lesbian horse trapped in a male horse’s body.
An attempted assassination attempt goes wrong, and the killer is chased, who falls off a building and suffers from amnesia. One of the cops investigating the crime is supported by his life long buddies, and changes tact when his wife and son are threatened with death by the bad guys who want the captured killer returned.
Thus, a load of generic and typical scenarios ensure involving a good cop that is framed for murders he didn’t commit, a mole, some ultra camp acting from the lead bad guy, who sports a hat at an angle and wears an overcoat on his shoulders looking ready to go full on into a musical interlude (played by Sonny Chiba!).
Things continue with dreadful acting on the part of everyone else, the emotional trauma and drama of a wet towel that’s fallen on the floor with no one around to witness such tension, and a musical accompaniment that would make you drill holes into your head to extract the fluid, fill it up with petroleum, seal it, light it and have your head blown apart by the explosion before you’re dead. Yes, I loved this film.
The film has so many implausibilities, that you have to wonder whether the Hong Kong Police are really so incompetent, perhaps due to watching re-runs of TJ Hooker and Cagney & Lacey. Honestly, the logic with which the cops were is simply terrible, and makes a mockery of the police. The amount of cheese is also inexplicably sickening; you have the cheesy grins, but not the “What a guy!” comment, something that you just wait to happen seeing as they went all out to make the corniest scenes possible. There are references to 9/11, but to be honest, these references are so far removed from the reality of the film, that they become irrelevant. The message is that terrorism will not prevail in Hong Kong, but it’s done in such a way, that you wonder if that’s actually true.
Lead acting is pretty preposterous. The funniest scenes are the memory recall of the amnesia affected killer, who now plays on the side of good. It’s just dumb; particularly when she gets angry and suddenly has a burst of memory on how to kill people in 3 seconds flat, then suddenly forgets and runs like a headless chicken. There’s no realism, no flat out grit in the film; it’s just implausible lunacy after implausible lunacy, with added cheese and more implausible lunacy.
The film is also poorly shot, with a cheap camera, done on cheap film. This may explain the poor nature of the print, and the low grade actors that starred in it. These people are regulars as special extras, on TV shows, have almost expired in the movie world (Sonny Chiba, Alex Fong) or just aren’t used well enough, and thus have no real prowess in the film. It’s all fantastically dull, lacking excitement or integrity to be called a film. The irony was that I was watching one crap film, and replaced it with this crap film because I was getting bored of crap film A, but crap film B turned out to be much, much worse.
I honestly cannot comment on any redeeming features this film may have had. It’s one of those movies, that you feel the best part of which are the rolling credits at the end. They would need to remake this, make it plausible, and for heaven’s sake, moderately coherent would be a good thing too, as well as introducing people that can actually act rather than remember a script. It’s an atrocious example of current Hong Kong cinema, which is currently riding on a high wave.
Verdict: Nonsense, garbage, incoherent. Explosive City is an explosive waste of time