The White Storm 2

The White Storm 2

Because the previous White Storm focused primarily on Hong Kong’s crime culture, this film possesses a similar environment to its predecessor, adds an actor and two characters (although none of them are really somehow connected to the first film), and attempts to deliver another subpar fight drama with a few memorable moments.

Sure, some of them have pretty decently developed additional bits in non-action related scenes, but the only actor with any fame to westernized filmgoers is most likely Lau Andy, whose stature was imprinted in Hollywood after playing the mole in the revered Infernal Affairs trilogy, the foundation of Scorsese’s remake.

Here Lau, looking for his morose grimace of sadness and birth like hardship that twitched on his face as he focuses too hard on the task, depicts Yu, who in 2004 is an up-and-coming member of a triad gang. The high-ranking member is told to do the unimaginable, which is to chop off three fingers of his ‘friend’ Fung (Koo) for refusing to abide by a drug dealing restriction in a certain area. Years go by and Yu escapes the underworld and becomes a legitimate wealthy businessman, thanks to his intelligent wife Chow (Karena Lam).

In the meantime, Fung seemed to have advanced into a capo and was supplying drugs for his active business, developing a criminal undercurrent that policer detective lam (Michael Miu) tries to overcome while caring for his little girl, who lost her mother ages ago at the hands of a drug addict. However, it turns out that Yu has spent his wealth ordering the death of the drug lords who have inflected pain worldwide by carrying out their liquor business.

From the beginning, the state’s endorsed message that criming particularly narcotic is a bad evil is cleanly and sharply delivered and on the fringe there is no other commentary about the possible suffering brought about by the business strategies that helped Yu his millions. There is some creativity to the manner of action – especially a great car chase towards the end that has two coupes driving on escalators into the subway making the already ordinary deaths of thousands of bystanders go by unnoticed.

Taking into account the fact that the over the top police drama The White Storm was for Chan Muk-sing a self tribute to the ’Heroic Bloodshed’ franchise, it is quite outrageous how this so-called sequel new director, different screenwriters and main actors (with the exception of Louis Koo Tin-lok, who somehow stars in almost all Hong Kong films) instead of using this familiar franchise in its name, has been submitted as a direct sequel.

Under the capable hands of Herman Yau Lai-to (The Leakers, Shock Wave), however, The White Storm 2: Drug Lords does manage to capture the thrilling sense of action and the high body count that characterized the original film but goes on to mangle the theme of brotherhood that added some depth to the melodrama that was the essence of Chan’s film, or at least that seemed to have been intended. This is a completely exciting, if also quite dramatically weak, popcorn action film.

The White Storm 2 begins with a prologue set in 2004, in which triad member Tin (Andy Lau Tak-wah, also a co-producer of the film) was in charge of his boss and uncle (Kent Cheng Jak-si) who forced him into cutting off Dizang’s (Koo) fingers for betraying the triad over two decades as a blood brother and selling dope at home. At the same time, the police inspector Lam’s (Michael Miu Kiu-wai) wife is seen to be killed in a related scenario.

Let us now look at how Tin has changed his ways, divorced his past, married a lawyer, and transformed into a business executive. Tin is persistent in his mission to destroy all major drug traffickers based in Hong Kong due to several illegal drug-related deaths in his family. This leads him straight towards Dizang a vengeful character who has emerged the most powerful drug dealer across the globe now.

While folkloric storytelling puts Tin’s struggle in perspective with random wars between major and minor players where Lam, his wife, mutualizes struggle from law to reward on the heads of drug dealers, Dizang wipes out competition trying to be Tin’s Top Enemy Number One, conflicts resolve. And later in the film though only the last action climax shockingly taking place in a Central MTR Station which is totally packed, saves the movie.

In its clumsy and desperate efforts to replicate and reflect upon the central ideas of the first film of loyalty and drugs, The White Storm 2 is merely a lowbrow and expensive gangster picture, with Miu’s police character being included only to satisfy Chinese censors. However, given the fact that it has been setting the box office afire from the day it was released in China on July 5, we could perhaps as well expect further White Storm remakes in the future while keeping all the narrative sophistication behind.

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