I’ve always wondered why Andy Lau (star of Shock Wave 2) never caught on in the United States, especially in the nineties when so many other Hong Kong action stars were breaking through in the American market. Internal Affairs, House of Flying Daggers, The Warlords – whether contemporary thriller or historical martial drama, he has consistently delivered good performances that are admired the world over, in more than 160 films going back to 1982. The man has worked consistently in Hong Kong and his films are shown in the U.S., but he never got the level of attention or respect of a Chow Yun Fat, Ziyi Zhang, Sammo Hung or Michele Yeoh.

Regardless, he delivers a perfectly fine performance in Shock Wave 2, the obvious sequel to Shock Wave (2017). One need not have seen the first film to understand and appreciate the second, indeed, the two almost seem unrelated anyway. If anything, SW2 may be a prequel. But it doesn’t matter which story is first. Andy Lau’s character even has a different name in this one. Perhaps that is both the film’s greatest strength and drawback at the same time – it is formulaic and follows the formula quite well, delivering on all the action movie tropes: a shoot-out in a hospital, a ridiculously high body count, the driving action score, the crosses and double crosses as allies are revealed to be working for enemies and enemies are revealed to be old allies gone bad. Chases, explosions, and people saying things like, “If we don’t stop that bomb, then none of this will matter anyway.” My cup runneth over. Saint Dominic Toretto, pray for us.

The film opens with a nuke exploding at Hong Kong airport. Then jumps back and forth in time from a week before to three years before, to the day of the explosion. Andy Lau plays Poon Shing Fung, a decorated bomb disposal cop that makes the guy from The Hurt Locker look like an amateur. He loses his leg in a terrorist bombing and the police try to shuffle him off to the PR department. He ain’t having it and quits the force.

Three years later, he is found in a coma at the site of another terrorist bombing and is presumed bomb suspect number one. He escapes from the hospital, but has no memory of who he is or what’s the deal with all the bombs. His former partner (in every sense of the word – cop/girlfriend) reveals he was an undercover agent, trying to find a terrorist organization called Vendetta planning something called “Resurrection Day.” Then he is “rescued” from the cops by Vendetta, who all have cool names like Sniper, Maverick, Money, and Slave. Poon is known as Blizzard and it turns out he is a member of the group, but not as an undercover cop. In his amnesia, he actually joined the group and is the mastermind of “Resurrection Day.” After he escapes them he spends the rest of the film helping his former police colleagues by trying to remember what he has planned.

Doesn’t matter though, because one does not watch this movie for consistency, narrative nuance, political insight, or to resolve the unresolved issues of the first Shock Wave. One watches this movie because bang bang boom boom BOOM. Now let’s drive fast to the next explosion. Will it be on a train? Or in a bus terminal? Or in a daycare center? Does it matter? BOOM!

In fairness, Shock Wave 2 is well acted, well shot, has beautiful cinematography and some lovely shots of Hong Kong, all in the service of, well, BOOM. There is some interesting intertext with the classic Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan (The Water Margin, c. 1524) and a critique of Hong Kong’s materialism and capitalism, along with a critique of oppressive systems. One can read the complex socio-political tensions of contemporary Hong Kong easily in this film. But mostly, we’re here for the BOOM!

9 out of 10 (Action Fans) & 6 out of 10 (Everybody Else)