Bodies At Rest

★★★✩✩

THIS Hong Kong-china co-production is intended to be “Die Hard 2 in a morgue”, according to an interview with director Renny Harlin published in these very pages. That made me a little worried. Were bodies going to start leaking fluids and burst into flames like miniature nukes? Were people going to get shot at point-blank range and turn out unharmed? Was it going to be set around Christmas just to remind us of its Die Hard DNA? The answers, in order: no, yes and yes, though there is an unnecessarily huge explosion somewhere in there.

It’s Christmas Eve, and hardworking pathologist Chan (Nick Cheung) is still on duty in the Hong Kong Public Mortuary. Suddenly, three masked men burst in and hold the skeleton (hur hur) crew at gunpoint, demanding access to a body that was brought in recently.

Cut. That’s it right there, all you need to know. For the rest, leave it to Harlin (Die Hard 2) to flex his action chops impressively in this (mostly) efficient thriller, and let yourself be dragged off on a wild and twisty ride.

The film’s headlong rush is disrupted only twice, once by a flashback (understandable) and once by the imagined consequences of a wrong decision (totally out of place and quite hokey-looking). Characters are broad sketches from the action cinema back catalogue, from Cheung’s resourceful hero (who is overshadowed in the action department by intern Lynn, played by Yang Zi) to Richie Jen’s scenery-chewing villain, to the henchmen, cops, bumbling security guard, drug lords and collateral damage who wander in and out of the narrative.

It’s all nonsensical good fun, with the good guys showing a fair bit of inventiveness in trying to outwit the crooks. Though they really let their imaginations run riot for the final ruse, which brings us to that unnecessarily huge explosion mentioned earlier. Yippee-ki-yay, mortuary ruckus! –