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The White Storm 2: The Drug Lords (2019)


AlbertV

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The White Storm 2: Drug Lords now has additional cast Michael Miu (Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star), Cherrie Ying (All's Well, Ends Well 2012), Karena Lam (Integrity), Chrissie Chau (P Storm), Michelle Wai (The Sorcerer and the White Snake), and Kent Cheng (Crime Story).  Herman Yau is the director.  The Hong Kong release date is listed as July 12, 2019 - from http://chinesemov.com/2019/The-White-Storm-2-Drug-Lords.html

Here's a new poster, posted on March 17, 2019 at https://twitter.com/AsianFilmStrike

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Official trailer via COF... Thanks! Surprised to see a hint at Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte and his "shoot to kill" drug policy. Will be interesting to see what they'll do with this...

 

 

Edited by laagi
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Asian Film Strike reviews The White Storm 2 at https://asianfilmstrike.com/2019/07/12/the-white-storm-2-drug-lords-2019-review/  "Long Story Short: An enjoyable Hong Kong thriller, The White Storm 2: Drug Lords is weighted down by shallow, mechanical writing but brought back to life by a show-stopping finale.”

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Watched this tonight.

Andy Lau plays an alcoholic wastrel who cleans up his life after his girlfriend leaves. After doing a short Triad stint with his uncle (Kent Cheng), he studies for the investment market and becomes a wealthy broker. Meanwhile, former Triad colleague Dizang (Louis Koo) gets kicked out of the family for drug dealing and becomes a big league heroin dealer. There's also a cop (Michael Miu) who loses his wife, also a cop, during a routine police raid and has now dedicated himself to busting drug dealers. Lau discovers that his ex-girlfriend bore his son when the former writes to him on her deathbed. When Lau goes to the Philippines to find him, he discovers that his son is a junkie who dies during a police raid. Having also lost his father to heroin, Lau declares his own private War on Drugs and hires a team of mercenaries to hit Dizang and his fellow pushers.

I did like the angle of the rich man not using his legitimate as a front for drugs, but rather investing in his own vigilante raids. The anti-drug message is pretty heavy handed: Drugs are bad. People who sell them are sub-human filth. The law is powerless to stop those in charge. Etc. All the protagonists all lose multiple loved ones to drugs (or drug-related violence) over the course of the film. It's nothing new or profound, but like I said, the private army angle was unique.

The action was directed by veteran HK stuntman Hon Ping. Hon Ping has had some more recent action directing gigs, like Johnnie To's Drug War and the Vegas to Macau sequels. He also contributed to two recent Andrew Lau bonanzas: The Guillotines and Kung Fu Monsters. He does show a lot of promise in this film. Most of the action is of the shoot-out variety, usually in the form of police raids or rival gangs exchanging gunfire. There's a nice sequence early in the second act that can best be characterized as a four-way gun battle. While it is chaotic--you never quite know who's firing at who--it ends up looking pretty cool. The finale starts off with some brutal car stunts, explodes into a three-way gun battle, and then switches gears (quite literally) into one of the craziest car chase sequences ever committed to film. I'm sure the last part is all digital, but the bit at the subway station is just bonkers. Hon Ping picked up a nomination for Best Action Choreography for this, but the award ended up going to Yuen Woo-Ping for Ip Man 4: The Finale.

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