You might enjoy the Hong Kong undercover cop drama \u201cI Did It My Way\u201d if you approach it with well-adjusted expectations. It\u2019s not a hard movie to like, given its well-polished action filmmaking and strong ensemble cast, led by co-stars Andy Lau and Gordon Lam, and featuring beloved character actors like Kent Cheng, Lam Suet, and Simon Yam. \u201cI Did It My Way\u201d exemplifies the current state of mass-oriented Hong Kong genre cinema, leaning hard on its seasoned cast to both remind viewers of better movies and carry this one around the bases fast enough that you still get your money\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n
Like a few other contemporary Hong Kong policers, \u201cI Did It My Way\u201d pits sweat-soaked Hong Kong cops against a respectable-looking crook and his vast criminal organization. Lau plays the crook, George Lam, a taciturn barrister who\u2019s suspected of dealing all kinds of drugs on the \u201cdark web.\u201d George peddles Super Molly and other illegal substances under the watchful eyes of Officer Fong Hing (Eddie Peng), the baby-faced Super-Intendent of the Hong Kong police\u2019s cyber-crimes unit. Fong\u2019s determined to stop the drugs, but his secret weapon is actually a double agent: Sau Ho, Lam\u2019s all-purpose \u201ccleaner,\u201d played by Gordon Lam. <\/p>\n
The melodramatic stakes are set high enough in some ancillary scenes, like when George Lam asks his pregnant wife Vivian (Yase Liu) to marry him. “I\u2019ll think about it,\u201d she says. These brief moments don\u2019t change how conventional the rest of the plot tends to be, between Sau Ho\u2019s unclear motivation\u2014he either wants to emigrate with his family, or to beat Lam and remain a cop (first choice)\u2014and the ultimate fate of Vivian\u2019s pregnancy. <\/p>\n
\u201cI Did It My Way\u201d helmer Jason Kwan doesn\u2019t always focus on his actors; more often than not he\u2019s advancing a formulaic cops-and-crooks plot. Still, Kwan (co-director of both \u201cChasing the Dragon\u201d and its in-name-only sequel) delivers a superior programmer whenever he slows down long enough to highlight Lau and Lam\u2019s work. As Sau Ho, the prolific Lam nails suggests a lot with his usual hyper-tense physicality. Lau still sweeps him and everyone else off the screen, whether he\u2019s smiling broadly at the cops, brooding quietly in his car, or texting his guys to \u201celiminate\u201d various enemies. Lau single-handedly knocks the movie into a higher gear when Lam snarls, \u201cLet\u2019s see if you can escape\u201d from behind the wheel of his Rolls Royce and prepares to run over Sau Ho and his family. <\/p>\n
Then again, the best scene in \u201cI Did It My Way\u201d doesn\u2019t feature Lau at all. Peng\u2019s stern superintendent briefly grabs the spotlight long enough to rescue Sau Ho from a young-ish looking killer. Fong valiantly body-slams through various plates of glass and shelves of bottles in a private wine cellar. It might be the first great action scene of year, and while anybody could\u2019ve filled Fong\u2019s shoes, Peng commits at least as much as the adrenalized scene requires. <\/p>\n
\u201cI Did It My Way\u201d may still leave you wanting more if you don\u2019t want to adjust your expectations so much. Maybe you expect more from a movie that features several supporting cast members who can and sometimes did out-do Lau in their earlier collaborations. Like, why isn\u2019t there more of Simon Yam, who plays a constipated-looking cop, and mostly leans on empty chairs and\/or puts his hands on his hips? And what\u2019s the deal with Super Molly, a synthetic drug that\u2019s apparently too strong for its users, as we see in a to-the-bone cutaway scene? Any way you slice it, you\u2019ll likely forget most of \u201cI Did It My Way\u201d soon after watching it; there\u2019s only so much to see between dark web hacking and police raid shoot-outs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You might enjoy the Hong Kong undercover cop drama \u201cI Did It My Way\u201d if you approach it with well-adjusted expectations. It\u2019s not a hard movie to like, given its well-polished action filmmaking and strong ensemble cast, led by co-stars Andy Lau and Gordon Lam, and featuring beloved character actors like Kent Cheng, Lam Suet, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[36,50,45],"class_list":["post-1304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-movies","tag-action","tag-crime","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}