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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film
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Nick Cheung in a still from “Bursting Point” (category III, Cantonese), directed by Dante Lam and Calvin Tong. William Chan and Isabella Leong co-star.
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Review | Bursting Point movie review: Dante Lam’s first Hong Kong crime thriller in years, starring Nick Cheung, is a gallery of gruesome deaths

  • Crime thriller Bursting Point marks Dante Lam’s return to filmmaking in Hong Kong after almost a decade of churning out patriotic blockbusters in mainland China
  • The film pits a police inspector and a drug-trafficking-gang boss against each other and is packed with enough violence to warrant an adults-only rating
Asian cinema: Hong Kong film
Edmund Lee
Edmund Lee
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3/5 stars

Hong Kong cinema fans who like their crime thrillers brutal and over-the-top are in for a treat with Bursting Point, which marks celebrated action film director Dante Lam Chiu-yin’s return to local filmmaking after almost a decade of churning out patriotic mega-blockbusters in mainland China.

Co-directing with first-time filmmaker Calvin Tong Wai-hon, Lam – who came up with the story and served as producer – has presumably left all his vicious ideas out on the screen.

His film’s sadistic penchant for burning characters alive must have contributed to its Category III (adults only) rating from Hong Kong censors.

Telling an extraordinarily convoluted story that never slows down for long, Bursting Point opens with a narcotics officer’s gruesome death during a drug bust and sets senior police inspector Bong (Nick Cheung Ka-fai) and drug-trafficking-gang boss Young (Shaun Tam Chun-yin) up as nemeses for each other.

Fast forward two years, and Bong is again carrying out an operation against Young’s illegal drug business, this time with help from strong-willed undercover police officer Ming (William Chan Wai-ting). Things get personal on both sides when Young’s brother dies in the aftermath.

While all of this may sound generic, Lam’s story fascinates with the way it keeps piling on tragic twists (family members are inevitably harmed) and horrific deaths (by corrosive acid, grenades, and more) – more than most conventional police thrillers would care to indulge.

William Chan in a still from “Bursting Point”.
No Lam film is complete without a sentimental family backstory and that is no different here – Bong is saddled with an estranged adult son to pit him against some random crime lord, while Xiu (Isabella Leong Lok-sze), a drug maker newly flown in from the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet, has a teenage daughter who is trouble incarnate.

It all builds up to a deadly showdown in a giant cave, although the screenplay takes a back seat to the gallery of grisly violence that Lam applies to both sides of the fight.

The filmmaker’s equal-opportunity motto is such that a child is stabbed in the stomach in one unexpectedly wicked scene.

Isabella Leong in a still from “Bursting Point”.
Lam has always displayed a readiness to depict the sickening reality of death in his films – even in a jingoistic production like his 2018 military epic Operation Red Sea. This sort of thing is glossed over in the name of entertainment in most trigger-happy action thrillers.

Bursting Point does not have a convincing enough story at its core to transform it into a cathartic experience, but the film is so determined in making every casualty count that it may well inspire a strange admiration in the viewers who do not look away.

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