Tony Leung lights up global spying flick ‘Europe Raiders’
NEARLY two decades have passed since Hong Kong director Jingle Ma launched his jet-setting Raiders franchise. But judging by this third instalment in the series (which follows the 2006 South Korea-set Seoul Raiders), time has seemingly stood still.
And Tony Leung made it all the more memorable by reprising his old role.
Featuring the same leering male protagonist, his photogenic paramour and sidekicks, and a plot revolving around a rogue hacker, the CIA and a computer chip measuring the size of an external hard drive, Europe Raiders parties like it’s still circa 1999. Why bother about 21st century emotionally scarred anti-heroes or the threat of global surveillance when you can entertain audiences with beautiful people running around beautiful Italian cities performing beautifully choreographed spyjinks?
Still, it’s puzzling as to why director Wong Kar-wai’s Jet Tone Films signed up to co-produce the US$26 million film alongside China’s Inlook Media. Though it surged to second place on the Chinese box office charts on its Aug 17 release with takings of US$14.1 million, the film’s gross swiftly spiralled down, adding only US$5.4 million more over opening weekend.
It has just opened in both Hong Kong and Singapore.
It’s obvious that exotic backdrops, lavish wardrobes and scintillating pyrotechnics are no longer enough to launch Europe Raiders with a new generation of viewers. The film’s passé premise is further deadened by a weak story and script.
Unfolding largely in Italy — mostly Milan — Europe Raiders revolves around Lin Zaifeng (Leung), a private eye who, in the prologue of the pic, crashes into a house and fights off thugs to rescue a computer scientist (veteran Hong Kong actor-singer George Lam), known simply as The Wind Listener. When the film proper begins, more than a decade has passed and the scientist is already dead. He has left behind his legacy, the “Hand of God,” a computer program which will allow the CIA to wreak havoc around the world.
But when the mugging spy chiefs try to launch the Hand of God, the system breaks down and the crucial computer chip is discovered missing. This, it turns out, is the handiwork of Sophie (played by Chinese supermodel and actress Du Juan, American Dreams in China), a hacker working undercover at the agency who happens to be The Wind Listener’s daughter. Desperate to wrestle control back, the agency tries but fails to get the semi-retired Lin on board to recover the chip. It’s only when the Americans turn to Wang Chaoying (Tiffany Tang, Bounty Hunters) that Lin suavely steps up to the bat, ready to fire up some on-screen chemistry with his girlfriend-turned-rival.
The Italian runaround begins with Lin and Wang trying to track Sophie down with the help of their underlings and the hacker’s younger brother Rocky (Kris Wu, Journey to the West: the Demon Strikes Back). The whole charade is simply a backdrop to the Mr and Mrs Smith-like sparring between Lin and Wang.
The big reveal cancels most of the tension and drama that goes before. But then again, Europe Raiders seems less focused on logic than on pleasurable sensations, as Ma (who also serves as his own DP), his designers and his action choreographer Han Guanhua concoct a relentless dream of fights and crashes. They have certainly succeeded in raiding the vaults of Hong Kong cinema for its most entertaining bits, even if they have sadly overlooked the fact that the world has moved on from vintage.