incompetent attempt at injecting depth into Jacky Cheung’s Cheung Wan-nam, in the form of a bipolar disorder that is later on revealed to have been triggered by his own internal moral struggle.

Neither of the Lees seem to have sufficient conviction to pull off the twist, nor for that matter does Yau have the finesse to weave it into the storytelling, so much so that the result is just painful to watch – what with a whole lot of flashbacks squeezed into the third act to try to over-explain just what would lead Nam down this misguided path, and a sadly miscast Cheung trying his best to emote the sort of unhingedness that only very few Hong Kong actors (like Sean Lau did in ‘Detectives Versus Sleuths’) can pull off. To be fair, not only Cheung but Nicholas Tse is also guilty of histrionics in the movie, which also speaks to how little direction Yau has paid to the performances of his two lead actors.

All that focus instead has been spent on the action, for which Tse also serves as choreographer. Much has been said about his debut in such a capacity, and to his credit, Tse does credibly both in front and behind the camera. Tse’s emphasis on real stunts is evident, and his commitment to execute many of these by himself is also admirable. Alas, some of that hard work is lost amidst the hectic camera work, which not only has the attention span of a 5-year old but also over-indulges in close-ups; the editing is likewise disorderly, with some obvious continuity issues that are simply inexcusable. Yau also lacks the meticulousness of fellow directors like Dante Lam and the late Benny Chan – and a perfect case in point is how the destruction of the Star Ferry Pier that is intended to be the piece de resistance of the climax is oddly uninvolving and even anti-climactic.

For all its hype, ‘Customs Frontline’ is a major letdown. Despite its ambitions, the action is overblown, and hardly as thrilling as it ought or intended to be. It is also overwrought, especially like we described in its midway twist of Nam’s bipolar disorder and apparent betrayal of his fellow Customs officers. And last but not least, it is also overlong, with plenty of undercooked subplots like the rivalry between Francis Ng’s operations commander Kwok and Karena Lam’s intelligence head Shao or even the romance between Nam and Shao. Our truly well-intentioned advice to Yau is to invest more time in each of his films; especially with such large-scale endeavours as this, Yau’s workmanlike approach is not even functional but downright sloppy.

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