The Big Heat

A forgettable and poorly executed police procedural from the hands of the otherwise so-capable Johnnie To (and companions). I did find it pretty remarkable that two decades later To would build his signature upon the crime genre, clearly he needed a little more time (and an implosion of the local film industry) to get to that point.

The plot is as generic as can be, but that's not at all uncommon for this type of film. Inspector Wong is ready to resign from the force when his longtime partner is suddenly found murdered. Wong assembles a team and starts an investigation, which leads to some very unexpected (but not really though) revelations.

I'm not the biggest fan of the genre, but with a proper cast and/or with some extended action scenes, these films can still be quite fun. There's none of that here. The styling is also completely rubbish and even though the film is on the shorter side, it hardly matters since most of it serves no purpose beyond simple genre filler. Disappointing.