This review may contain spoilers
A disappointing drama despite having legendary actors
You know, I wondered if anything else could take legendary actors and put them in average dramas for us to watch like they did with Bowie Lam and D.I.D 12 this year, and this gave me my answer. Yes. You have proper great actors like Jordan Chan and Simon Yam that do amazing jobs in their roles, and yet the drama is terrible. Just awful!
So what is the story? The driving plot of the whole drama is that some white dude with a beard, who is in a room with huge monitors showing stock market trends, wants the Hong Kong stock market to crash. Why? I don’t know. He just wants it to happen gosh darn it! To make it happen he has some outside help to make it happen like this woman with an Australian accent called Anna and this crazy gangster played by Peter Ho. I cannot hear half the stuff the white dude says because he speaks too quietly and slurs his words together. And he is always seen in that huge room with the monitors with huge graphs and is never seen anywhere else, even as the drama ends he is still there throwing a tantrum. Because we never get a clear motivation on why he is targeting Hong Kong specifically, it is all very shallow and we get no depth. It is just “me want HK economy to collapse, lol” and that’s it. Wtf? Why not the UK? Why not USA? Heck, why not Singapore? Nope, is had to be Hong Kong
The drama starts off with a sting gone wrong. Jordan Chan is part of the Organized Crime department. He and his mentor try to arrest a group of gangsters in a sting operation, but Peter Ho - as the boss of the gangsters - managed to strap an explosive watch onto Jordan’s mentor’s wrist. He makes Jordan beg for his mentor’s life before pressing the button to activate his mentor’s explosive watch anyway. His mentor jumps into the water to save Jordan’s life while Peter uploads part of a clip he recorded of Jordan begging to make it look like he was begging for his own life.
Jordan later gets moved from Organized Crime
to the EU department because of what happened. He refuses to explain to his wife what happened that day, thus driving a wedge between them, and everyone thinks Jordan is a coward.
While in the EU team he meets his new team, which includes the nearly retired EU driver played by Simon Yam. Jordan continues his investigation into Peter Ho while doing his EU duties despite not being allowed to investigate crimes anymore.
Jordan has some great scenes showing off his police sense and understanding how to approach situations to deescalate and handle situations well. He also has great observation skills and notices things that others can miss. When he is doing this stuff he is great to watch, but then we have scenes where he is trying to be a better husband and father. These scenes are difficult to watch because he and the woman who plays his wife - Lynn Hung - have nooo chemistry at all. Just none! Even when they start to make improvement in their relationship, you don’t see them as husband and wife and just as friends who happen to live together.
Was Peter Ho a good villain? Despite spending the entire drama speaking mandarin to Jordan, I found this to be the best move to make because that was his native language and he was able to emote really well. I found him equally fun to watch and menacing at the same time because he had the charisma to appear like a gang leader while demonstrating in many scenes how smart and tactical he was at planning operations against the cops. The only thing that ruined his character was how he could have easily just shot Jordan at the beginning and prevented all the headaches Jordan would give him, but he instead let Jordan live to suffer the death of someone close to him (his mentor). I found that really dumb. He dies at the end after kidnapping Jordan’s wife and locking her in a police van filled with C4 explosives, telling Jordan it came time for Jordan to pay. That made ask why didn’t he shoot Jordan in episode 1?! Come on! Jordan manages to finally shoot Peter in the neck, setting off the C4 bomb countdown as the timer was linked to Peter’s heartbeat.
Then we have Aarif Lee who plays a fellow EU officer. He has a particular bias against Jordan because after the incident with the mentor, Aarif’s father made the decision to keep Jordan in the police force, which cost him a potential promotion. Despite witnessing great police work done by Jordan, Aarif spends most of the first half of the drama just being an unreasonable prick against Jordan. This got really annoying really fast and should have been resolved much sooner.
The drama tried to be more international so it had a mix of many languages in it, from cantonese to mandarin to hindi to english. The problem is that this got very annoying to watch as you had to suddenly focus on the subtitles to understand some things being said, and not helping things either was the terrible audio mixing done. Some scenes the speech was fine, others it is too quiet, so you have to turn up your speakers to hear it. And then suddenly as the episode ended, the ending song would play loud af and scare you out of your seat because you were just watching a quiet dialog scene. Why do this? They should fire the sound guy.
And to top it off, you have people who try to speak cantonese but you can immediately tell cantonese was not their main language so it comes out all wonky and weird. I found this really distracting. Get a speech coach or just use the language you are more comfortable with. For example, Cecilia Han is clearly a native speaker of mandarin, so when she attempted cantonese I just cringed so much. And there is this guy who speaks with a perfect English accent when having chats with Anna and her Australian one, and then switches back to cantonese immediately. I don’t understand these scenes because that man and Anna can speak canto, so why switch to english?
Simon Yam was great in his role of EU driver as he was the oldest member of the team but had great advice for everybody. He refused to be promoted because his wife had early onset alzheimer’s disease so he didn’t want the extra responsibility of work to stop him caring for his wife. I found that really touching and Simon really played his role very well. At the end, Simon makes the ultimate sacrifice by saving Jordan’s wife from the van with the C4, then driving into the harbor to prevent loss of life. As he got ready to do this he called Jordan to tell him to look after his wife with tears streaming down his eyes, and it was great… up until his van hit the barrier and everything became CG, including the explosion. The CG was terrible, like think Playstation 2 era game graphics.
Speaking of the bad CG, it feels like they ran out of money after spending most of it on the cast. The effects were just terrible no matter how you looked at them, and there is this constant feeling that certain things had to be cut to save money and this persists throughout the entire drama.
There was a part of the drama trying to discuss the prejudices that Hong Kongers have against South Asians, in this case Indians, and how they assume they are all crooks. I found myself not really caring about this subplot because it was so obviously forced into the drama as there was no racism up until that plot point, then suddenly everybody is prejudiced against South Asians. Once that part of the drama was over, there was no more racism against South Asians. Like what? I understand these are important topics but this was so clearly forced in. Just focus on the cops catching bad guys.
The drama’a ending was very unsatisfying. The cops manage to save the Hong Kong economy from collapsing but the white dude from the beginning still wanted to being down the Hong Kong stock exchange so ordered his minions to sell sell sell! The Hong Kong elite talk about using their assets to buy buy buy and keep the Hong Kong stock exchange from collapsing, and then one guy had a bright idea. This young man stood up, and without a hint of hesitation, said that maybe they could save the Hong Kong economy and stock exchange by depending on the Hong Kong public. His plan was to drop a hint to the public to buy specific stock, which they would guarantee would give a good return, so this would encourage the public to buy buy buy and thus save the Hong Kong economy from collapsing. All the elites realized they would not have to buy stocks at a loss agreed immediately because of course they would, and somehow the public really took the bait and bought those stock. I know this was meant to be portrayed as Hong Kongers coming together to save their own economy, but in reality it was rich people basically tricking the public into buying stock that have a high chance of losing value in the future so they wouldn’t have to swallow that loss themselves. Wtf?
It ends with the Hong Kong economy being saved and that white dude getting very upset. And that’s it. Nothing else. That white dude doesn’t get arrested or anything, we just cut to the cops getting on with their lives and then the drama ends. Ha?? What??
Just awful.
So what is the story? The driving plot of the whole drama is that some white dude with a beard, who is in a room with huge monitors showing stock market trends, wants the Hong Kong stock market to crash. Why? I don’t know. He just wants it to happen gosh darn it! To make it happen he has some outside help to make it happen like this woman with an Australian accent called Anna and this crazy gangster played by Peter Ho. I cannot hear half the stuff the white dude says because he speaks too quietly and slurs his words together. And he is always seen in that huge room with the monitors with huge graphs and is never seen anywhere else, even as the drama ends he is still there throwing a tantrum. Because we never get a clear motivation on why he is targeting Hong Kong specifically, it is all very shallow and we get no depth. It is just “me want HK economy to collapse, lol” and that’s it. Wtf? Why not the UK? Why not USA? Heck, why not Singapore? Nope, is had to be Hong Kong
The drama starts off with a sting gone wrong. Jordan Chan is part of the Organized Crime department. He and his mentor try to arrest a group of gangsters in a sting operation, but Peter Ho - as the boss of the gangsters - managed to strap an explosive watch onto Jordan’s mentor’s wrist. He makes Jordan beg for his mentor’s life before pressing the button to activate his mentor’s explosive watch anyway. His mentor jumps into the water to save Jordan’s life while Peter uploads part of a clip he recorded of Jordan begging to make it look like he was begging for his own life.
Jordan later gets moved from Organized Crime
to the EU department because of what happened. He refuses to explain to his wife what happened that day, thus driving a wedge between them, and everyone thinks Jordan is a coward.
While in the EU team he meets his new team, which includes the nearly retired EU driver played by Simon Yam. Jordan continues his investigation into Peter Ho while doing his EU duties despite not being allowed to investigate crimes anymore.
Jordan has some great scenes showing off his police sense and understanding how to approach situations to deescalate and handle situations well. He also has great observation skills and notices things that others can miss. When he is doing this stuff he is great to watch, but then we have scenes where he is trying to be a better husband and father. These scenes are difficult to watch because he and the woman who plays his wife - Lynn Hung - have nooo chemistry at all. Just none! Even when they start to make improvement in their relationship, you don’t see them as husband and wife and just as friends who happen to live together.
Was Peter Ho a good villain? Despite spending the entire drama speaking mandarin to Jordan, I found this to be the best move to make because that was his native language and he was able to emote really well. I found him equally fun to watch and menacing at the same time because he had the charisma to appear like a gang leader while demonstrating in many scenes how smart and tactical he was at planning operations against the cops. The only thing that ruined his character was how he could have easily just shot Jordan at the beginning and prevented all the headaches Jordan would give him, but he instead let Jordan live to suffer the death of someone close to him (his mentor). I found that really dumb. He dies at the end after kidnapping Jordan’s wife and locking her in a police van filled with C4 explosives, telling Jordan it came time for Jordan to pay. That made ask why didn’t he shoot Jordan in episode 1?! Come on! Jordan manages to finally shoot Peter in the neck, setting off the C4 bomb countdown as the timer was linked to Peter’s heartbeat.
Then we have Aarif Lee who plays a fellow EU officer. He has a particular bias against Jordan because after the incident with the mentor, Aarif’s father made the decision to keep Jordan in the police force, which cost him a potential promotion. Despite witnessing great police work done by Jordan, Aarif spends most of the first half of the drama just being an unreasonable prick against Jordan. This got really annoying really fast and should have been resolved much sooner.
The drama tried to be more international so it had a mix of many languages in it, from cantonese to mandarin to hindi to english. The problem is that this got very annoying to watch as you had to suddenly focus on the subtitles to understand some things being said, and not helping things either was the terrible audio mixing done. Some scenes the speech was fine, others it is too quiet, so you have to turn up your speakers to hear it. And then suddenly as the episode ended, the ending song would play loud af and scare you out of your seat because you were just watching a quiet dialog scene. Why do this? They should fire the sound guy.
And to top it off, you have people who try to speak cantonese but you can immediately tell cantonese was not their main language so it comes out all wonky and weird. I found this really distracting. Get a speech coach or just use the language you are more comfortable with. For example, Cecilia Han is clearly a native speaker of mandarin, so when she attempted cantonese I just cringed so much. And there is this guy who speaks with a perfect English accent when having chats with Anna and her Australian one, and then switches back to cantonese immediately. I don’t understand these scenes because that man and Anna can speak canto, so why switch to english?
Simon Yam was great in his role of EU driver as he was the oldest member of the team but had great advice for everybody. He refused to be promoted because his wife had early onset alzheimer’s disease so he didn’t want the extra responsibility of work to stop him caring for his wife. I found that really touching and Simon really played his role very well. At the end, Simon makes the ultimate sacrifice by saving Jordan’s wife from the van with the C4, then driving into the harbor to prevent loss of life. As he got ready to do this he called Jordan to tell him to look after his wife with tears streaming down his eyes, and it was great… up until his van hit the barrier and everything became CG, including the explosion. The CG was terrible, like think Playstation 2 era game graphics.
Speaking of the bad CG, it feels like they ran out of money after spending most of it on the cast. The effects were just terrible no matter how you looked at them, and there is this constant feeling that certain things had to be cut to save money and this persists throughout the entire drama.
There was a part of the drama trying to discuss the prejudices that Hong Kongers have against South Asians, in this case Indians, and how they assume they are all crooks. I found myself not really caring about this subplot because it was so obviously forced into the drama as there was no racism up until that plot point, then suddenly everybody is prejudiced against South Asians. Once that part of the drama was over, there was no more racism against South Asians. Like what? I understand these are important topics but this was so clearly forced in. Just focus on the cops catching bad guys.
The drama’a ending was very unsatisfying. The cops manage to save the Hong Kong economy from collapsing but the white dude from the beginning still wanted to being down the Hong Kong stock exchange so ordered his minions to sell sell sell! The Hong Kong elite talk about using their assets to buy buy buy and keep the Hong Kong stock exchange from collapsing, and then one guy had a bright idea. This young man stood up, and without a hint of hesitation, said that maybe they could save the Hong Kong economy and stock exchange by depending on the Hong Kong public. His plan was to drop a hint to the public to buy specific stock, which they would guarantee would give a good return, so this would encourage the public to buy buy buy and thus save the Hong Kong economy from collapsing. All the elites realized they would not have to buy stocks at a loss agreed immediately because of course they would, and somehow the public really took the bait and bought those stock. I know this was meant to be portrayed as Hong Kongers coming together to save their own economy, but in reality it was rich people basically tricking the public into buying stock that have a high chance of losing value in the future so they wouldn’t have to swallow that loss themselves. Wtf?
It ends with the Hong Kong economy being saved and that white dude getting very upset. And that’s it. Nothing else. That white dude doesn’t get arrested or anything, we just cut to the cops getting on with their lives and then the drama ends. Ha?? What??
Just awful.
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