Customs Frontline sounds more like a wholesale furniture outlet than an action movie. Maybe something got lost in the translation, though it is indeed about Hong Kong customs agents. I suspect such a job is seldom as dangerous and exciting as depicted here, but that’s okay. After all, who the hell would wanna watch a cop movie where its characters spend most of their time filing police reports?
Dedicated agent Chow Ching-lai (Nicholas Tse), his mentor/boss, Cheung Wan-nam (Jacky Cheung), and their team come across an adrift cargo ship. The crew is dead, but the ship is loaded with weapons stolen from Thailand. While escorting two Thai agents to the customs warehouse where the weapons are being held, they are ambushed by mercenaries working for an enigmatic arms dealer known as Dr. Raw (Amanda Strang), stealing them back to sell to a couple of countries at war with each other.
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| "Stand down, guys...that's just my DoorDash delivery." |
But the film gets bogged down by its subplots. We’re led to expect Chow’s pending divorce to have some kind of significance, but instead, that thread sort of disappears into the ether. Additionally, the film establishes Cheung as suffering from bipolar disorder, a well-presented development that might have made an interesting film itself, but I fail to see how it really serves this narrative.
For the most part, though, Customs Frontline is a pretty decent way to kill a couple of hours. The fiery, destructive climax is especially exciting, which I suppose can be considered our reward for enduring the weak attempts to inject human drama. And if nothing else, it makes the job of customs agent look more thrilling than it probably is in real life.
EXTRA KIBBLES
MAKING OF FEATURETTE
TRAILER
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