CUSTOMS FRONTLINE Brings the Kaboom

CUSTOMS FRONTLINE (Blu-ray)

2024 / 116 min

From Well Go USA

Available at www.MovieZyng.com

Review by Mr. Bonnie, the Boat Inspector😼

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.

"Stand down, guys...that's just my DoorDash delivery."

That’s the nutshell plot, which largely has Chow and Thai agent Ying (Cya Liu) trying to track down both the weapons and Dr. Raw. When focused on the action, Customs Frontline is generally pretty entertaining. There’s fighting, gunplay and plenty o' kaboom, which is all well executed...save for the laughable CGI blood spurting from gunshot wounds (come on, guys, are squibs really that expensive?).

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

THE ADVENTURERS: Andy Lau Brings the Pain

THE ADVENTURERS (Blu-ray)

1995 / 110 min

From Eureka Entertainment

Review by Mr. Bonnie, the Badass😺

When this arrived, I initially thought it was a rerelease of an identically-titled film I once reviewed which also starred Andy Lau. And I had no problem with that. I generally enjoy Lau’s action movies and 2017’s The Adventurers was a fairly entertaining heist flick. But 1995’s The Adventurers is a completely different animal. It’s one of director Ringo Lam’s lesser-known films on this side of the pond, having never been released on Blu-ray until now.

Lay plays Wai Lok-yan, a Cambodian fighter pilot still traumatized from witnessing the murder of his entire family when he was a boy. The man who killed them is Ray Lui (Paul Chun), a treasonous former CIA operative who’s since become rich as an illegal arms dealer. Wai has had revenge on his mind ever since, and after a failed attempt to assassinate Ray, he’s recruited by the CIA to go undercover as a ganglord in order to help bring Ray (and his much bigger associates) to justice.

Andy Lau suffers for his art.

The job takes him to San Francisco, where he wastes no time taking over territories. He also insinuates himself into the life of Ray’s estranged daughter, Crystal (Jacklyn Wu), eventually marrying her to get closer to his target. The problem is he’s also fallen in love with her, which creates a moral quandary, especially after he learns she’s pregnant. And absolutely none of this sits well with Mona (Rosamund Kwan), Ray’s mistress with whom Wai enjoyed a brief tryst. 

It's occured to me that I’m making The Adventurers sound like a melodramatic soap opera. While some narrative elements reflect that, it’s primarily a violent, complex action film. Some of the story doesn’t always come across as plausible, but it’s certainly exciting, with some excellent action sequences. Lau has always been a solid physical & dramatic actor, and he’s in fine form here. As Ray, Chun makes a wonderfully hateful foe, while Kwan could sort-of be viewed as a femme fatale…and a compelling one at that.

The Adventurers is nowhere near as upbeat as the somewhat misleading title suggests. For the most part, the tone is dark and serious, compounded by brutal violence and a massive body count, especially during the kaboom-laden climax. For Andy Lau and Ringo Lam fans, this one-time collaboration is worth seeking out. 

On an amusing side note, the original poster (reproduced on the Blu-ray cover) shows Lau standing in front of a New York skyline, even though none of the movie takes place there.

EXTRA KIBBLES

INTERVIEWS - Two Adventurers features Asian Cinema journal editor Gary Bettinson, who thoroughly discusses the golden era of Hong Kong action films, focusing largely on director Ringo Lam and The Adventurers; Interview with writer-producer Sandy Shaw.

AUDIO COMMENTARY - By critic David West.

SUPPLEMENTAL BOOKLET - Includes “Unconventional Heroism,” an essay by Han Joon Magnan Park; cast, crew & Blu-ray credits.

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