I DID IT MY WAY Review: Jason Kwan Delivers A Satisfactory Action Cybercrime Thriller
I Did It My Way arrives on Digital beginning March 18 from Well Go USA.
Director Jason Kwan’s got a good pair of feet in the crime thriller arena after his recent Chasing The DrIagon tête-a-tête. Nowadays, he reunites with a few of the screen talents in those titles to bring the genre into the digital age with I Did It My Way, starring Andy Lau, Gordon Lam, and Eddie Peng, with special appearances by Simon Yam.
A major drug bust goes bust at the top of the film when a fatal flaw ensues the rise of a barrister named George Lam (Lau), and a loyal enforcer named Sau Ho (Lam), to the top of a global crime ring using the dark web. As Cybercrime Investigation Unit superintendent Eddie Fong (Peng) fights to close in and shut the network down for good, what remains to be seen is if whether he can do so without blowing the only undercover op he has left, in a thrilling crime procedural where merely playing by the rules may no longer be an option.
Such is a point in the narrative where I reckon the title gets its inspiration. Even better, you get a film worth the cast and allure it commands as a gritty, tragic, and explosive story with some propulsive action sequences to boot. Lau and Lam continue to channel their best selves on screen as criminal cohorts with secrets of their own, and both of them forced to measure just what hands they’ll be forced to play while keeping certain moves close to the chest. This comes especially as the both of them are beholden to someone they love and care for, namely Lam with pregnant fiancée Vivian (Cya Liu), and Sau Ho married to Maggie (Hedwig Tam) with a son.
Peng delivers a worthy performance as the head lawman, Fong, who also gets to deliver the film’s singular hand-to-hand fight scene with action actor MJ Chan (a.k.a. Chun-Fung Chan) who plays and underworld assassin named “Silence”. Most of the action is relegated to requisite gun battles that do the trick, topped off with a fair deal of car chases and wrecks right down to the film’s finale.
Kwan’s use of CG inserts to illustrate the cybernetic battlefield between the CIU and Lam’s army of dark web hackers and netizens make for a trendy addendum to the narrative. This aspect also comes with biometric scanning as a feature which plays interestingly into the story, and made me wonder just where things were gonna go, apart from the film’s near beat-for-beat story attributes in terms of crime procedurals about undercover cops and their crises of conflict.
Rounding out the cast are a handful of other notable supporting performances by character actors like Kent Cheng and Lam Suet, as well as Philip Keung, and Terrance Lau. To add, I would say that the film’s most discernible non-Asian casting isn’t exactly the most appealing in that the character is supposed to be a South American cartel boss, and the fact that you can hear the visibly Caucasian actor’s British accent along with whatever layered dubbing post-production included doesn’t do much for representation here. That said, it’s fair to note these movies aren’t typically aimed at representing most demographics other than target audiences, and there’s no real reason to take it that seriously, just seriously enough, I guess. You be the judge.
The high point really is Lau, and following him as the story progresses with the backing of Lam, Peng, and Yam, along with actresses Liu, and Tam all as key players. Select moments are attributed with recurring themes and score reduxes of the titular seminal pop ballad classic and Schubert’s Ave Maria which add a little something to the routine plot.
The film’s exit shot plays like something out of a commercial which almost takes away from the events of the film’s climatic chase scene in which a bad guy flies his car off a cliff, landing in his home and crashing before the funeral shrine of his beloved. It’s supposed to be a solemn moment which makes what happens last feel a little dissonant than preferred. At any rate however, it’s a Hong Kong crime flick that delivers mostly on its promises. Besides, if you trust Kwan’s resumé enough to go see his next, for a title like I Did It My Way, what more (or less) would you expect?
