Hong Kong movie producers, at times, are at odds with China because some of the themes of the films they make focus on the delicate political relationship between the special administrative region and Beijing. Film festival entries in Hong Kong, like “Ten Years,” angered Beijing that Tencent and China Central Television did not air the Hong Kong Film Awards in April 2016 for the first time in 34 years.
Chinese Police Cooperation
However, for a change, Alan Mak and Felix Chong, the producers of an upcoming crime film “Extraordinary Mission,” sought and got the cooperation of China’s Ministry of Public Security. The ministry’s Shield Entertainment Center, a state-run company, is one of the production companies on the list the producer made to acknowledge those who supported the movie’s production, Global Times reported.
The film revolves around an anti-drug unit in mainland China. The cast is led by pop stat Huang Xuan, a mainland actor, and Duan Yihong who is the movie’s main villain. “Extraordinary Mission” would premiere on Friday, March 31. The film was shown to college students across China and it received middling reviews.
Middling Review
One such review came from Jingyujun, a netizen, who noted that crime movies are the easiest for Hong Kong movie makers to produce. The local audience laps up the crudeness of drug dealers and the struggles of undercover cops that directors simply copy and paste these elements from old movies into a new film. But he observed, “The climax comes too late and the emotional parts are overdone.”
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the movie is about a police officer who went through a rough path in his life. His mother recently died, the cop was being investigated for bribery and while he was going to his mother’s funeral, the policeman hit someone that he had to hide for a while.
The movie adds to the growing list of films by Hong Kong producers who craft political mainstream cinema. The list includes “Operation Mekong,” which is competing at the ongoing International Mediterranean Film Festival in Morocco, and “The Taking of Tiger Mountain” by Hark Tsui.