At The Movies: Andy Lau’s hijack thriller High Forces fails to take off

High Forces (PG13)

119 minutes, opens on Oct 10 ★★☆☆☆

The story: Security expert and former special operations police officer Gao Haojun (Andy Lau) is on a flight which, by coincidence, is the same one boarded by his former wife Fu Yuan (Liu Tao) and blind daughter Xiaojun (Zhang Zifeng). On board are VIPs, as well as a dozen hijackers. When their leader Mike (Qu Chuxiao) makes a show of his ruthlessness by killing passengers, Gao draws on all his skills to subdue the threat to bring his family, and the 800 other passengers, home safely.

There are several reasons why a single-location movie about a man going berserk on a bunch of baddies might be fun to watch, but this action thriller fails to provide even one.

The result is a work that feels like a throwback to the 1990s, the heyday of mildly violent thrillers about unkillable men single-handedly mowing down whole armies. These days, lone-wolf stories draw the crowds through stripped-down plots and M18-rated gun and martial arts action – the hero’s vengeance is bloody, as are the deeds of the villains.

Instead, High Forces’ makers bank on Lau’s star power and a family-centred narrative to attract audiences, hoping this combination lends the project an air of wholesomeness.

The Hong Kong actor delivers a strong performance as the devoted dad. His character Gao diverges from typical Western action heroes by being motivated not just by parental concern, but also by a desire to atone for past parenting mistakes.

Gao’s restrained emotions, while reflecting both Asian preferences for stoic heroes and Chinese censorship requirements, contribute to the film’s somewhat dated feel.

This sense of anachronism is further reinforced by the inclusion of a blind character in need of rescue, a trope reminiscent of classic Hong Kong thrillers.

Hong Kong director Oxide Pang opts to focus on plot development rather than extended action sequences to fill High Forces’ two-hour runtime.

However, this narrative-heavy approach ultimately tests the audience’s suspension of disbelief, as the accumulation of convenient plot turns and questionable depictions of airline operations become increasingly difficult to overlook as the story unfolds.

Pang has a background in action thrillers, often working with his twin Danny Pang as part of a co-directing duo known as the Pang brothers. They had their heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s with action thrillers such as Bangkok Dangerous (1999, and remade by them in 2008 with Nicolas Cage in the lead role) and horror film The Eye (2002).

Oxide Pang in solo mode helmed the well-received psychological thriller Ab-normal Beauty (2004) and the neo-noir crime thriller The Detective (2007), which earned enough to justify a 2011 sequel.

High Forces is at its most tension-filled when the focus narrows to the two-hander between Qu’s villain Mike and the heroic Gao. Qu does a fine job of portraying him as a loathsome individual in need of a grand comeuppance, which the film delivers.

A movie set in an Airbus A380 would fail at the outset if the cabin interiors looked fake, but on the aircraft authenticity front, it scores an A+.

Hot take: This dated airplane thriller fails to take off despite Lau’s star power and impressive set design.