TIK TOK (2016) review

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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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EXTRAORDINARY MISSION (2017) review

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Felix Chong and Alan Mak, the writers of the classic Infernal Affairs trilogy, are back to the undercover thriller (the former as screenwriter and the latter as co-director with cinematographer Anthony Pun), and they’ve made the anti-Infernal Affairs. Extraordinary Mission follows Lin Kai (Huang Xuan) a cop sent to infiltrate a drug cartel by his superior Li Jianguo (Zu Feng), a former undercover himself. Fiercely motivated by the death of his mother from a drug overdose when he was a child, Lin quickly penetrates the cartel, until he finds an occasion to meet its ruthless, possibly deranged leader Eagle (Duan Yihong), and earn his trust to then dismantle the whole network.

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