Shock Wave 2

A Hong Kong police officer working in bomb disposal loses a leg in an explosion. He walks with a prosthesis and wants to return to duty; the service will not allow it. Time passes. One day there is an explosion at the airport and the man is found at the scene; he has lost his memory and does not know why he is there. The police are hunting him as a member of a terrorist organisation. He is not certain himself who he is. Herman Yau directs. Andy Lau takes the lead. It counts as the sequel to a film from 2017, though the narrative is independent; the same actor plays a different character and the earlier film is not required. The idea at the centre is uncertainty built on memory loss; whether the character is really guilty is not explained for a long time. The action is at large scale and was worked with practical effects; the airport and tunnel sections are the most ambitious parts. The second subject is exclusion after injury; the man being pushed out of the service and his reaction to it is the starting point. It was a large commercial success in Hong Kong and China. Its limit is the script; the plot leans on coincidence and the explanations in the last section pass quickly. Who it is for: viewers who like Hong Kong action cinema and large scale genre films. Who it is not for: the narrative is weak, the character strands are formulaic, and the ending is overblown.