For Shock Wave, Herman Yau was given the biggest budget of his directing career, and was rewarded with his biggest commercial success yet. Andy Lau plays JS Cheung, a superintendent of the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Bureau finds himself in the crosshairs of a dangerous terrorist, Hung Kai Pang (Jiang Wu), in whose gang he had gone undercover years ago, and whose brother (Wang Ziyi) he put behind bars. Hung, a deranged bomb specialist, is hungry for revenge and wants his brother out of prison; after challenging Cheung with carefully crafted explosive devices left in public places, he takes hundreds of civilians hostage in Hong Kong’s Cross-Harbour Tunnel, which he has rigged with 1000kg of C-4 explosive.

(more…)