Director: Wilson Yip
Production Company: Sun Entertainment Film Froup, Bona Film Group, Alibaba Pictures, Sunny Side Up (Never) Limited, Sil-Metropole Organisation, Wish Films, Flagship Entertainment, Shanghai PMF Media, YL Entertainment and Sports (YLES), Rock Partner Film, Huoerguosi Bona Media, Aether Film Production
Country: Hong Kong/Mainland China
Year: 2017
When going into an action thriller of some kind, especially an action thriller from any of the Asian nations, and especially those from the 21st century, there’s always a slight rubbing together of the hands. These films rarely disappoint, and I don’t like to put together all those very distinct countries together as ‘Asian’, but somehow they’ve all mastered that blend of action, violent crime, and sheer emotional rollercoasters, in a way that ‘European’ or ‘American’ nations very rarely get to grips with. Therefore, when I turned on Paradox, I was very hopeful for something that would thrill, entertain, make me wince, and give me a little bit of the emotional butterflies at the same time.
Following a cop (played by Louis Koo) who travels to Thailand to track down his missing daughter, he teams up with another officer (played by Yue Wu), and they uncover much more than a simple kidnapping; a conspiracy which plays into the politics right at the heart of the city. Combining the standard crime thriller/police procedural with elements of full on martial arts that we’d come to expect from Wilson Yip (he also directed all of the Ip Man films starring Donnie Yen) in much the same way that a film like The Raid 2 did a few years earlier, it manages to keep itself focused by not making itself too complicated, and focusing instead on the driving emotional heart of the determined father and the well-executed fight scenes and action sequences.
Everyone’s acting in the film is top notch. Louis Koo was nominated for (and won, I believe) several national awards for his performance in the film, and rightly so. He manages to keep the emotion going throughout the film, never getting too caught up in the action to forget to convey that his character knows why he’s doing it. Any writing course in the world will tell you that a character’s primary need should drive their every action, and Koo understands this; even better that he’s able to show it in every twitch of every muscle. That he’s able to allow all this emotion to spill over in the final few scenes makes it all the more worth it. Having a character that’s meant to be deadly serious most of the time can kill a performance, as it can end up coming across as wooden and lifeless, but Koo pulls it off.
Both Yip’s direction and the action sequence direction (done by Sammo Hung) manage to keep the whole film moving and never lets you off the hook. There’s a certain kind of Jackie-Chan-style methodology of the fight choreography, by using all the props and pieces of set design in the action itself; not surprising as Hung has worked with Chan in the past. One such example which springs to mind involves a foot chase, with the pursuant slipping on a freshly mopped floor, and Wu’s character almost sliding past him too far on the same slippery floor. It’s those little things that make it all just a little more unique, and far more interesting. And if the film’s not in full out action mode, it’s tense detective work building up to another explosive sequence, or a rare moment of humanity that shines through. With the two detectives in the car, Wu’s character Chui sings down the phone to his unborn child, with flashes of Koo’s Lee Chung-chi and his child in the past, allows a little time to breathe whilst not letting us completely switch off from the gut-wrenching nostalgia of the scene.
In the end, Paradox works simply because it’s an exceptionally well made film. It’s got incredible choreography that borders on ridiculousness (it has a few moments where the characters perform athletic feats nobody outside of a superhero would be able to accomplish, but it just about keeps it within the realms of plausibility, just about), but which keeps the blood pumping, with confident direction and writing, capped off by incredible performances that make us actually care about what we’re meant to care about. I think that’s the main key to Paradox. We actually give a damn when we’re meant to give a damn. And that is a rare and special achievement which allows for an entertaining, violent, and sometimes poignant film.
Rating: 8/10
Review by Kieran Judge
Twitter: kjudgemental
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KJudgeMental 