All posts for the month October, 2017

TIK TOK (2016) review

A Korean-Chinese co-production, Li Jun’s Tik Tok takes place in Seoul and follows Korean cop Jiang (Lee Jung-jae), who is investigating the kidnapping of a footballer’s wife, mere hours before he is supposed to play in a momentous match in an Asian championship. By tracking the kidnapper’s phone, Jiang is led to Guo Zhida (Wallace Chung), a Chinese gambling addict who wears a mask after being disfigured in a factory fire, and suffers from severe mental illness, for which he is being treated by Yang Xi (Lang Yueting), a Chinese psychiatrist hired by his brother Zhihua (also Wallace Chung). Zhida has placed several bombs in the stadium where the football match is taking place, and now Jiang must play his sick game of riddles and bets to get him to tell where they are, before it’s too late.

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MANHUNT (2017) review

In John Woo’s Manhunt, a remake of the classic 1976 Japanese thriller of the same title, Zhang Hanyu is Du Qiu, a successful lawyer who’s been working in Japan for a big and shady pharmaceutical company headed by Sakai (Jun Kunimura), who is passing the torch to his son Hiroshi (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi). But when Du wakes up with a dead woman (Tao Okamoto) in his bed, no recollection of what happened but all clues conveniently pointing to his being the murderer, he must go on the run. Hunted by hard-boiled cop Yamura (Masaharu Fukuyama) as well as by two female assassins, Rain (Ha Ji-won) and Dawn (Angeles Woo), who work for Sakai, Du can only rely on the help of Mayumi (Qi Wei), a mysterious woman linked to his past.

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SKY HUNTER (2017) review

Wu Di (Li Chen), Zhao Yali (Fan Bingbing), Gao Yuan (Leon Lee) and few others are the elite of the Chinese air force, and have started training under the strict leadership of flying legend Ling Weifeng (Wang Qianyuan) to be a part of the Sky Hunter task force, when a terrorist organization led by Rahman (Tomer Oz) takes dozens of Chinese citizens hostage in the fictional state of Mahbu, demanding one of theirs be released from prison. But when the freshly-released terrorist is gunned-down by a vengeful father, it’s left to Wu Di and his comrades to rescue the hostages in a daring attack on the terrorists’ base.

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1 Comment

by LP Hugo on October 3, 2017 • Permalink

Posted in Film Reviews

Tagged deng chao, fan bingbing, li chen, wang qianyuan, wang xueqi, wu xiubo

Posted by LP Hugo on October 3, 2017

https://asianfilmstrike.com/2017/10/03/sky-hunter-2017-review/

THE FOUNDING OF AN ARMY (2017) review

After Han Sanping and Huang Jianxin’s The Founding of an Army and The Founding of a Party, what we like to call “the PRCCU” (People’s Republic of China cinematic universe) gets a third installment with Andrew Lau’s The Founding of an Army, which is backed by no less than forty-six credited producers, and more importantly, by the Chinese state. And so in solemn commemoration of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army, ninety years ago, Chinese audiences have been treated to yet another round of episodic, star-studded, title card-ridden, speech-happy propaganda, again with Liu Ye as the charismatic, statuesque, handsome, saintly, selfless, farseeing, and most of all, deeply, deeply humanistic Mao Zedong (note that our use of irony here is about as heavy-handed as the film’s approach to history).

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