Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Shock Wave Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 3, 2018

James Brown was famously called the hardest working man in show business, but I’d like to offer an alternative candidate, at least within the context of the Asian film industry: Andy Lau. What’s kind of hilarious about Lau’s ubiquity is that it is incredibly multi-faceted, and in fact, like that aforementioned Mr. Brown, includes a remarkable musical career that Western fans of Lau’s film work may not even be overly aware of. But just limiting things to Lau’s work in films, it would be easy to surmise that Lau simply lives on a studio lot, traipsing from production to production, since his filmography regularly lists several releases per year. In 2017 alone, Lau starred (and frequently co-produced) no fewer than five feature films, a record that in a way harkens back to the golden days of the Hollywood studio system, when contracted stars were expected to stay gainfully employed with little if any downtime. Perhaps because one of the labels I cover is Well Go USA, an outfit which has long been associated with Asian fare (I'm actually a bit surprised Shock Wave has been released by Cinedigm and not Well Go USA), I’ve had a glut of Lau films in my review queue. That glut includes a film I just covered, another one of Lau’s 2017 efforts, The Adventurers. (Soon enough I’ll be covering yet one more of Lau’s 2017 offerings, Chasing the Dragon .) Lau typically provides a stolid presence in his films, and while he’s now in what we Westerners might term his “AARP years”, he also continues to regularly exploit a pretty impressive physicality in many of his portrayals (Lau was famously badly injured a few years ago when filming a stunt scene that evidently included a misbehaving horse). The Adventurers in fact found Lau in quasi-Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible mode, supposedly jumping out of a helicopter and gliding through midair in one of those silly “flight suits”, or even more saliently being lowered into a top secret vault like location where infrared alarm lights provided a significant obstacle course. Shock Wave relies more on Lau’s intellectual proclivities, though, in a film that attempts to document the admittedly interesting work of bomb disposal units within the Hong Kong police force. The film may not have the visceral intensity that some of Lau’s more propulsive action adventure films do, but it’s often exciting and will probably be met with approval by Lau’s large fan base.

There are certain elements to the timeline of Shock Wave that I found just a bit puzzling, but it’s evident that a cop named Cheung (Andy Lau) has been undercover in a criminal gang for some time, working to help them develop explosives for an initially unknown reason. The gang is led by a guy named Hung Kai-pang (Jiang Wu), whose little brother Hung Kai-piu (Leo Wang) tells Cheung that Cheung is the only one Kai-pang trusts. That trust doesn’t extend far enough for Kai-piu to divulge that he’s going to change license plate numbers on a series of taxi cabs that have been outfitted with explosive devices, however, so that when Cheung alerts his cop buddies to the fact that these vehicles are spreading out around Hong Kong for an unknown reason, the license plate numbers he gives them don’t really help them to track down things before detonations start going off.

That’s just one kind of odd formulation that Shock Wave presents in its early going, with another being that the plot utilizing the bomb laden taxi cabs turns out to be an almost patently insane heist of gold at a vault where the Hung gang dons masks that make them all look suspiciously similar to Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight. Cheung is along for the ride, but perhaps because the screenplay necessitates the brutal deaths of scores of guards ostensibly protecting the loot, he’s left outside to keep watch. Only later, during a calamitous car chase that ensues does he tip his police hand, something that ends up getting Kai-piu arrested, but which leaves Kai-pang on the run, and of course now out for revenge.

And in fact it’s the predictability of the revenge scenario that undercuts what is in essence a rather fascinating look at the stresses those who work for bomb disposal units regularly experience. Again, I was a little confused about some elements of the timeline, but there are sequences that document Cheung defusing various explosives that I personally found much more riveting than the whole “I’m going to blow up Hong Kong to get back at you” scenario. The interesting thing about the whole bomb disposal angle is that it tends to go against what one typically thinks of as providing energy in an action adventure film: instead of relentless chases and gunfire (though there are certainly those elements at play in Shock Wave), the film actually derives most of its suspense in “quieter” moments where the only “action” is Cheung deciding how to make things not go “boom”.

Shock Wave Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shock Wave is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The IMDb lists the Red Epic as having been utilized for the shoot, with a 2K DI. This is overall a very appealing looking transfer, one that boasts impeccable fine detail levels in the many extreme close-ups of Cheung sweating over "which wire to cut" (so to speak). There are some kind of peculiar grading choices at play which can at least minimally affect detail levels at times, though. Several outdoor scenes have a kind of odd looking greenish-yellowish cast lurking just beneath, and the extended tunnel sequence that serves as a huge set piece is also bathed in kind of amber tones. The tunnel scenes especially occasionally have slight deficits in shadow detail, but nothing overly problematic. Some of the CGI is almost comical at times (take a look at the "sparks" from ricocheting bullets in screenshot 19 for one example). There are no issues with banding (which frankly may have occurred had this been released by Well Go USA) or other compression anomalies.

Shock Wave Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shock Wave features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes in both Cantonese and Mandarin, and aside from the obvious differences in languages being spoken, I didn't really notice any substantial differences in the overall mixes or general amplitude levels. There are of course explosions in the film, which give LFE a nice workout, and which also provide spills into the surround channels. A couple of silly car chases also offer good panning effects and some forceful use of discrete channelization when collisions occur. A lot of the film is pretty talky, however, and in those moments immersion tends to be limited to occasional ambient environmental effects. All aspects, including dialogue, effects and score, are rendered with excellent fidelity and very wide dynamic range on this problem free track.

Shock Wave Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making Of - Bomb Disposal Expert (1080p; 2:21) is a brief EPK with Lau discussing the skills the real life officers need. It's not clear to me if the title of this short featurette means that the film was released under a different title at some point, or at least was called Bomb Disposal Expert at some point in its production process.


• Trailer (1080p; 2:02)

Shock Wave Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's getting to be "another day, another Andy Lau film" around these parts (somewhat hilariously, Chasing the Dragon showed up on my doorstep as I was writing this review), but the man has charisma to spare, so watching a glut of his movies is not the chore it might seem. I think I probably liked The Adventurers a tad more than Shock Wave, despite The Adventurers' patent absurdities (not that this film doesn't have those as well). Fans of Lau will almost certainly enjoy this film, though I have to say I think it might have been more interesting if the kind of tired exploits of the villain had been rejiggered somehow and the film could have just focused on the worthy work of bomb disposal unit. Recommended.