Heroic Duo: Reviews

Over the past few years, Benny Chan has become one of the most solid action movie directors working in Hong Kong. Even though for the most part, Chan's films aren't exactly considered "classics" (but Big Bullet is a cult favorite and Gen-X Cops wowed many people), he always seems to deliver the goods, and Heroic Duo is no exception. It has an inventive plot, it's technically well-made, and, perhaps most importantly, delivers some good action along with some strong performances.

Heroic Duo tells the story of a detective named Ken (played by Ekin Cheng, who must have distressed teeny-boppers all over the world after he cut his flowing locks) who is investigating a fellow officer after he sets fire to a station's vault. It turns out the cop was hypnotized by a master thief (Francis Ng, in another "chew up the scenery" villian role that he's known and loved for), so Ken teams up with another hypnotist and former police advisor (before he was sent to jail for shooting a man) named Jack (Leon Lai). The investigation soon turns up a series of double-crosses, and Ken himself becomes a fugitive after he is implicated in the theft of some valuable jewels.

It seems that every action/crime/drama (a.k.a. "heroic bloodshed") picture nowadays wants to be some new version of Infernal Affairs or Young and Dangerous, so I really enjoyed the fact that Heroic Duo tried a different approach. Like last year's Double Vision, Heroic Duo adds in enough outside elements without delving too much into techno-babble or cheeseball antics. Benny Chan is able to keep the film's focus in check -- it's not trying to be the next Sixth Sense or anything like that. Heroic Duo reminded me a bit of Ringo Lam's Hong Kong works -- there's very little filler here, "good" and "bad" are relative terms and there's plenty of violence.

From start to finish, Heroic Duo is a well-crafted film. Everything, from the very cool CGI title sequence to Leon Lai actually squeezing out a performance, has a little more polish to it than many other recent movies, and it's that little extra bit of attention the film-makers paid to the product that elevates this from being something that for some reason feels like it could be very generic (i.e., yet another "cop and robber team up" flick) and makes it into something well worth watching.

My initial hopes regarding Heroic Duo and it's director Benny Chan was that it would equal something a notch or two below his 1996 movie Big Bullet. I.e. a few notches better than his last two films (Gen-X Cops and Gen-Y Cops) combined. The end result though is an uninteresting mix of slick looking action filmmaking, ever so slightly touching human drama and short bursts of fun action. The script, with a decent premise revolving hypnosis, doesn't try to change the world but if you do want your characters to come off the page, cast interesting actors. Unfortunately we're stuck with Ekin Cheng and Leon Lai, not the poster boys for movie charisma. Ekin is actually a bit better than usual in a not so challenging cop role while Leon is saddled with the most complex character in the film. Leon's character could've worked under another director and sadly Benny has lost that touch of directing actors like we saw in A Moment Of Romance. Francis Ng, despite sleepwalking his way through the film, is the only barely watchable thing in it while Raymond Wong logs this year's worst supporting performance. Also starring Karena Lam (much better in July Rhapsody) and Xu Jing Lei.