It's My Duty: Customs Frontline (2024) Review

Director: Herman Yau

Notable Cast: Jacky Cheung, Nicholas Tse, Karena Lam Kar-Yan, Liu Yase, Francis Ng, Kenny Kwan Chi-Bun, Carlos Chan Ka-Lok, Michelle Wai, Ben Yuen Foo-Wah, Michelle Yim

 

Considering that director Herman Yau has been one of Hong Kong’s most prolific directors since the early 1990s, it’s fascinating how he has transformed his career to match what the market is looking for. His most recent stint combines a love letter to golden-age 1980s HK action and a craving for Hollywood-style spectacle. He still occasionally slides back to dramatic thrillers or horror films, but he has mostly stuck to his “guns” in recent years. 

 

After dropping four (!) large-scale action flicks in 2023, he’s back with Customs Frontline, which is receiving quite a bit of international press. Featuring two icons of Hong Kong cinema with Nicholas Tse and Jacky Cheung, Customs Frontline follows in the footsteps of some of his previous action blockbusters like The White Storm 3, Moscow Mission, and Shockwave 2. It’s bigger than life, filled with soapy melodrama, and brimming with action sequences that border on refreshingly insane. So, despite a thinly threaded script and characters that feel more like caricatures than people, it’s hard to deny that Customs Frontline doesn’t entertain. It does have a giant ass boat tear through other boats and docks in the neon glow of the Hong Kong skyline. There’s that. 

 

Helios (2015)

Directors: Sunny Luk and Longman Leung

Notable Cast: Nick Cheung, Jacky Cheung, Shawn Yue, Chang Chen, Wang Xueqi, Janice Man, Ji Jin-hee, Choi Siwon, Yoon Jin-yi, Josephine Koo, Fen Wenjuan, Lee Tae-ran

After the success of Cold War, directors Sunny Luk and Longman Leung needed a worthy follow up. Cold War was a decent success, most effectively by taking in 9 different awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards that year including Best Film and Best Director. Naturally, that leaves a lot of pressure on the duo to follow it up with something just as strong. A film that still felt distinctly their ‘style,’ but perhaps pushed them in some new directions. After three years, the duo came back with Helios. Now, Helios came out in 2015, but it didn’t get a US release until the end of 2018 with it ultimately debuting as a Netflix release with little fanfare and no marketing. This isn’t necessarily an indicator of quality of the film, but it does indicate that, compared to Cold War and the directing duo’s return to that world with Cold War 2 post-Helios, the film just didn’t generate the buzz. That’s because, for better or worse, Helios is too much of the same as their other films and it just can’t quite match the complex narrative flourish that allowed those to work. When it does deviate and take some chances, the film is ambitious if not flawed in trying to do so. Helios ends up being a bit too much like Icarus and instead of being a sun god, flies a bit too close instead.