“Chasing the Dragon II”: A Bunch of Routines

Release Date：Jun/7/2019
Genre：Action/Biography/Crime
Director：Jason Kwan、Jing Wong
Cast：Tony Leung Ka Fai、Louis Koo、Gordon Lam、Simon Yam

Viola's Rating：6.8







While more than a million Hong Kong people are protesting against the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Bill, a Hong Kong feature film related to the amendment was released in the US on June 7^th, 2019.

Following its prequel, “Chasing Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch” is also adapted from a true story, but adjusted for entertaining purposes. Based on the fictionalized accounts of Cheung Chi Keung’s kidnapping of the affluent, the plot of this criminal, biographical action is mainly about an infamous Chinese gangster Logan, also known as "Big Spender”, a serial billionaire kidnapper, who has been savaging Hong Kong. Now, his gang is aiming beyond Hong Kong, at a wealthy Macau tycoon.

Totally unrelated to its prequel, “Chasing Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch” isn’t very different from all the other classic Hong Kong films. For audience who loves Hong Kong flocks, it contains explosions, shootouts and tough talks that are satisfying, but for those who expect to see something unexpected like we did with the first episode, all we get is the routine police-action drama.

However, it’s still pretty entertaining because of the editing of the opening. Since the storyline of the motion picture is different from what Cheung Chi Keung actually did, and the crew still wants to allude to him, something notorious he did has to be included. Through the montage clips in the beginning, moviegoers get a clear picture of Logan’s bad deeds very quickly and eventually it pays off as a bookend to close the movie perfectly.

Interesting enough is that even though Logan is the antagonist, it should still be the “protagonist” of the picture, but all the incidents are surrounded Louis Koo’s character, Sky, as if he is actually the leading role. Koo has five feature films in total in 2019, and he acted as an undercover in three of them. What a busy year for him!

Due to the reason that Logan is infamous for kidnapping affluent tycoons, his gang needs well-rounded plans like the ones in “Ocean’s” series. However, instead of spending time on developing or explaining their plans in a clever way so that the audience will empathize with the villains, “Chasing Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch” gives most of the screen time to Koo. Not a bad idea for his aficionados, but it sends out a message that except when they’re actually kidnapping tycoon, the gang’s pretty goofy and wonder how the plan could actually go smoothly without any mistakes.

Also, the motivation of Logan is a little bit too weak for such an antagonist. He’s like the vicious version of Thor, doing everything for his misbehaved little brother, ending up getting himself a bunch of troubles.

All in all, “Chasing Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch” has plenty to please moviegoers, but there are a bunch of routines that have been done many times before.

Picture Credit: IMDb