Crisis Negotiators

Cheuk Man Wai is the police force's best negotiator. When he is named prime suspect in a murder investigation he finds himself cornered. He arms himself, takes over the station and holds the officers inside hostage. He has one condition: he will talk to Tse Ka Chun, a retired negotiator. The two men sit down at a table, and who is steering whom becomes unclear. Herman Yau's Hong Kong film is a remake of the American production The Negotiator from 1998. Lau Ching-wan and Francis Ng are opposite each other, both of them names of thirty years' standing in Hong Kong cinema. There is little action; the film is almost entirely two men talking. The real subject is not the hostage crisis but a reckoning inside the police force itself.