Cold War sequel ultimately leaves you cold [Review]
For a while in Cold War 2, everything feels much better than in its prequel. After a speech by new police commissioner Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok) about how great the police are, we plunge straight back into where Cold War left off, with Lau’s wife kidnapped.
The pacing is fast. The dialogue is tense. The stakes seem higher. Kwok shows more emotion as he brings Joe Lee (Eddie Peng Yu-yan), a renegade cop Lau captured in the last film, to an MTR station to exchange him for his wife.
But Lee escapes. And it turns out that his dad, B. M. (Tony Leung Ka-fai), a police chief who resigned because of his son’s actions, is a bad guy after all. The Lees and some corrupt officials want Lau out of his job, so spread rumours that lead to Lau’s being questioned by LegCo.
That’s when the film loses traction. The action scenes are spectacular, and there’s a heart-stopping moment when B. M. confronts his accomplices. But most of the time the characters are yammering away at each other in their suits and ivory towers.
Of course, to echo the first film, Kwok and Leung have another slanging match before Chow Yun-fat’s legislator character walks in to tell them off. It all comes across as quite childish. You hope for a plot twist at the end, which sadly never comes.