Paradox (Shā Pò Láng・Tān Láng)

 When Chinese teenager Lee Wing-Chi (Hanna Chan) disappears while abroad in Thailand, his father Lee Chung-chi (Lois Koo), a Hong Kong police detective, decides to follow her to Thailand to put his particular set of skills to good use.

 His particular set of skills are, of course, being a police detective. He strikes a good rapport with the Chinese ex-pat detective Chui Kit (Wu Yue) who's assigned the case, and soon they're working together trying to find the missing daughter; You'd have thought it'd take more paperwork than that, but I'll take it.

 The first lead they find is a red herring, but it sets an extremely promising tone for the rest of the movie: After a clever investigation where they commandeer business CCTVs to trace the missing teen, there's an excellent bar brawl that devolves into a frantic foot chase that's punctuated with a couple of very, very cool moves. The action choreographer is Sammo Hung - this feels a little grittier, a little more brutal than his usual wheelhouse, but the fights are unafraid to break out some silly/awesome maneuvers and slight bending of realistic physics. It's a lot of fun.

 The bust ends up being... well, a bust, though, and Lee becomes persona non-grata and thrown off his unofficial post in the investigation. No worries, he just goes off to do some investigating of his own.

 Both him and Chui Kit, running on parallel tracks, establish that Lee's daughter was kidnapped by an organ-trafficking ring led by a delightfully sleazy American (Chris Collins) who goes around in a short-sleeve t-shirt, suspenders and hat ensemble like a lost member of the Entourage cast, which automatically marks his as a douchebag. That, and leading an organ trafficking ring, of course. 

 Lee, now fallen from grace, gets there through torture: Chui through an investigation that reveals a cover-up within the police and leads to the film's highlight fight scene - a  multi-stage brawl that ends with sidekick Tony Jaa (!), who's possibly got psychic powers (!!), fighting against the organ-trafficking douchebag on a rooftop. It involves children being thrown off buildings as a distraction; Fun!

 But then the film veers towards... if not full-on grimdark, towards all-pervading bleakness; As it happens, Lee Wing-Chi's heart is vital to save an important politician's life, so her fate seems preordained. There's a pivotal car crash that highlights the script's tendency for metaphysical soap operatics (Writers: Nick Cheuk, Lai-Yin Leung). The story hinges on what are effectively extreme coincidences and contrivances, but since it's built off them by design, it comes off as bleak fatalism and karmic retribution.

 This sort of thing doesn't do a lot for me (unless it's much better crafted) but I can't deny the power of that tangle of story threads during that crash scene, or the complexity that's added once it's revealed how much of a rotten father Lee was.

 And at the risk of spoiling the tone it settles on, it's a very pessimistic film. It would have had more impact on me if its tone were more consistent, or if the script had made the tiniest gesture to feeling authentic (the level of political operators we see here would never get their hands as dirty as they're seen here; it's like we're missing a whole layer of fixers) - but if you can look over that sort of stylization, it will probably pack a pretty hefty punch.

 Most of that is down to HK legend Louis Koo - his excellent, layered acting adds a lot to what in the end is a fairly clichéd thriller character. We know he can do shootouts and some stunts, but sadly he doesn't handle himself too well in the elaborate hand-to-hand fights; A decent trade-off, since the movie is more about drama than fisticuffs anyhow. Jaa doesn't get a huge amount to do, but he gets up to some memorable weirdness and a really great fight. Wu Yue is extremely likeable as the moral center of the story and picks up the slack from Koo in the fights department. And Tony Jaa is Tony Jaa; his role here is officially a 'special appearance', but he gets a good fight and some memorable weirdness. As welcome a presence as he always is.

 Wilson Yip's direction is assured and, until some jittery editing during the final fights (mostly to hide Koo's lack of martial arts training) it keeps things cristal clear.

 I only found out after watching it that it is the third entry in the SPL / Killzone series - the only ties are thematic, some elements, and in the talent involved - oh, and in the Chinese title. I guess I should have realized it once the pointed coincidences, heightened melodrama, and the organ traffickers came into play. This one is completely overshadowed in the action department by the first sequel (quality and quantity), but I think it works slightly better as a story; its grimness is uncompromising.

Warriors of Future

 Warriors of Future is a Chinese big-budget effects-heavy action extravaganza. If you've watched any of those, you know what to expect: a shitshow, to put it bluntly. Shallow characters, cheap, brazenly manipulative twists, cheesy sentimentality, Broad and extremely unfunny jokes, naked nationalism, crappy CGI...

 ...and that's pretty much my review of Warriors of Future. Except that the CGI is pretty good, and you really need to dig into it if you want to get offended by the nationalism. Other than that, this is an absolute piece of shit somewhat redeemed by pretty explosions, some cool action action beats and mech designs, and a lot of unintentional laughs.

Hey, is that Crysis 4?

 So let's get the good stuff out of the way first: it is actually so bad it's good, at least some of the time; my favorite thing in it Nick Cheung as the general, a guy who's 650% gravitas, always squinting off into the distance while the camera rotates around him reverentially:

MAXIMUM SQUINTAGE

 This guy had me in stitches every single time he appeared. Every. Single. Time. Which is, thankfully, a lot of times, though most of them served zero purpose except to remind you he's still there... squinting.

 But there's so much more. This is a movie unafraid to boldly go where everyone and their fucking grandmother have gone before. Consider the case of the bereaved protagonist, moping after his lost daughter. Will he meet a precious moppet miraculously alive in an alien-infested hospital? And will said moppet heal his broken soul? I shan't spoil it, dear viewer, but if you appreciate shameless cheese, you'll like appreciate this movie.

 And it wraps up after almost exactly an hour and a half, which is downright considerate. Wish more terrible movies did that. That's including an inexplicable post-credits sequence setting up... uh, I have no idea what it's supposed to be setting up.

 The action isn't half-bad. Barring a couple of hiccups, the CGI is actually at the level of a mid-tier Marvel movie, which is high praise for this sort of thing; in fact, there are several Marvel 'homages' here, specifically an overused Iron-Man-Helmet-Cam type deal, which is just as annoying as on the Iron Man movies, and an extended Captain America reference.

 The choreography and the way it's filmed is a bit less impressive... so I guess it's like a Marvel film in that respect as well. It takes its cues from videogames more than anything else, overtly so; There's a little bit too much editing, too many show-off speed ramping effects, and too little style to get me excited, but it's always easy to follow and while what was happening was almost invariably stupid, it did hold my interest.

 Everything is overblown; expect an overtly dramatic orchestral score, a fucking cornucopia of unnecessary, drawn-out flashbacks, slow-motion emotional moments, inspirational speeches... the works. While the movie can be mined for a ton of clearly unintentional comedy, the bits of actual 'humor' here invariably fall flat on delivery. It's not a matter of the comedy being broad - it's... basically the jokes consist of the characters bickering in the most uninspired way imaginable and bullshit screaming matches. It's dismal.

 It's hard to gauge acting with a script this bad and a story so basic, so I'm giving the benefit of doubt to Louis Koo (usually very dependable, a regular in Johnie To's films) and a cast of faces that may be familiar to anyone who's watched HK cinema in the last decade.

 And yes, that includes Squints McDelicious. I'd like to state for the record, though, that according to Wikipedia he was in something called "Raped By An Angel 4: The Rapist's Union". I dearly hope he played this same character, contemplating rapist worker's rights with the same thousand-yard stare.

 You'll notice I haven't gone into the plot yet - hey, you're pretty observant!

 In the end, I can't say I resent this movie for being as bad as it turned out to be; As I wrote of Messr. Emmerich recently, if you ordered a turd sandwich you can't really complain about it tasting like shit. To be clear, there's some fantastic Chinese cinema out there - it's when they get populist and blockbustery like this that you need to lower expectations accordingly. This one's definitely not an exception.