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Edmund Lee

1.5/5 stars
It would be churlish of me to describe how unexciting this posthumous release of Wilson Chin Kwok-wai’s final feature film is, but boy, is Burning Blood a difficult one to sit through.
Chin, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2020 at the age of 58, was one of the most successful variety show producers at Hong Kong broadcaster TVB. Meanwhile, the films he directed, from the Lan Kwai Fong trilogy to his last two theatrical releases, 2016’s Kidnap Ding Ding Don and Special Female Force, were often travesties of cinema.
Burning Blood turns out to be no exception.


Shot in Thailand in 2018 and shelved seemingly indefinitely following Chin’s death, this dreadful police thriller was completed in post-production by veteran film editor Wong Hoi, who was called in to salvage the project and is credited as “editing director”.
Banking on the affection many cinema-goers harbour for the Hong Kong gangster classic Young and Dangerous, Burning Blood casts four of that 1990s series’ leads as members of an anti-narcotics squad that is broken up by betrayal inside the force.
As their operation to catch a drug lord ends tragically in the film’s opening scenes, Feng (Jerry Lamb Hiu-fung) dies, Tang (Jason Chu Wing-tong) goes into hiding as the suspected mole, while Taihua (Jordan Chan Siu-chun) and Laomi (Michael Tse Tin-wah) become estranged – even though both continue to work as police.
What follows “three years later” is a barely there story of loyalty and justice, as Taihua and Laomi reluctantly join forces to root out a corrupt police officer and arrest the mysterious criminal mastermind they have long been after ahead of the latter’s retirement.

While the subplots – the impulsive Taihua is saddled with a new police recruit (Feng Mengmeng) at work and has a drug-addicted younger brother (Alex Lam Tak-shun) at home – never draw you in, it is Paul Chun Pui’s turn as the villain that proves to be the most interesting, despite his limited screen time.
Action thrillers set around drug cartels in Thailand’s Golden Triangle have been a popular recipe for Hong Kong-China co-productions in the past decade. Unfortunately, Burning Blood is inferior to most of those films in every single department.
Its screenplay is filled with clichés but devoid of character development, the action is forgettable, the CGI effects are atrocious, the overall direction is shoddy, and even its lead actors, Chan and Tse, fail to display the charm and charisma required to carry the unconvincing story.
Burning Blood is not of a quality that any self-respecting filmmaker would like to go out on, although Chin’s swansong is indeed representative of his usual mind-numbing style of storytelling.
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Jerry Lamb, Jason Chu, Jordan Chan and Michael Tse reunite in Wilson Chin’s posthumous final film that is just as bad as his others


Jerry Lamb, Jason Chu, Jordan Chan and Michael Tse reunite in Wilson Chin’s posthumous final film that is just as bad as his others.


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Review | Burning Blood movie review: Young and Dangerous stars back for awful police thriller

Jerry Lamb, Jason Chu, Jordan Chan and Michael Tse reunite in Wilson Chin’s posthumous final film that is just as bad as his others