THE RESCUE
***
Director: Dante Lam
Screenwriters: Wong Sze Man, Tan Yuli and Yaqing Zhi.
Principal cast:
Eddie Peng
Zhilei Xin
Zhang Jingyi
Yanlin Wang
Yingying Lan
Yutian Wang
Country: China
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 139 mins.
Australian release date: Friday 18 December 2020
Hold on to your popcorn and prepare for another action-packed movie from Chinese director Dante Lam in The Rescue; Lam has a great talent for choreographing and filming the most amazing stunts, as seen in his previous efforts Operation Mekong and Operation Red Sea. Not for the faint of heart, this graphic drama is set in Hainan on the South China Sea, where we are introduced to an Emergency Response Unit of China Rescue & Salvage, a sort of Chinese Coast Guard, who are dropped on to a burning oil rig, a crashed aeroplane sinking in the sea, a truck swept off a winding mountain road into a raging river and, ultimately, an exploding LNG transport ship. Phew!
The charismatic Eddie Peng stars, his fourth collaboration with Lam, and he’s very good as the brave captain, Gao Qian, whose men will follow him anywhere. When it’s not focussing on the extraordinary rescue sequences, the screenplay attempts to humanise these heroic men and women, whose credo is “giving the hope of life to others and saving the danger of death to [our]selves,” by showing us the backstory of some of them. Captain Gao is a widow with a young son, Cong Cong (the delightful Zhang Jingyi), who wants his dad to find him a new mum. Enter recent recruit, chopper pilot Fang Yulin (Zhilei Xin), who initially clashes with Gao but then begins to regard him as more than the hot-head she first thought he was. There’s also Zhao Cheng (Yanlin Wang), another helicopter pilot in the squad, who’s humming and hawing about finally having his wedding photos taken with wife Wen Shen (Yingying Lan). Unfortunately, these sequences don’t add much, except for those involving Gao and Cong Cong, and they really only serve as links between the four big action set-pieces.
And big they are! The Rescue begins with Gao hurling himself into a raging fire on a collapsing marine oil rig to save two wounded men and ends with an absolutely extraordinary spectacle on a burning ship carrying liquid natural gas. For these and the other dramatic scenes involving the truck in the river and the plane ditched in the sea, Lam and his crew filmed in the massive water tanks on the Baja Peninsula of Mexico first built for the filming of James Cameron’s Titanic. They were incredibly difficult to shoot, utilising all the skills of Oscar-winning DoP Peter Pau (he won his Academy Award for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and the film took over four months to record (and five years of pre- and post-production). Wherever possible, Lam wanted everything ‘real’, insisting that his movies have a feeling of reality. Not only did he purchase an old A320 Airbus for the plane crash scene, he also hired a gigantic crane to suspend the frame of the plane to shoot the interiors rather than build a set. He says, “I believe in filming what’s real. Everyone thinks filming is about camera movements and editing, but I think the actors can give a real response [when] they sense something real or unexpected.” He does, of course, have to use CG and other visual effects when necessary but there’s much less of these than there would be if The Rescue was shot in Hollywood.
A Dante Lam film is always going to be ‘big’ in every sense, usually grossing big receipts at the box office, and this one is too. While not quite on a par with his Operation films, there’s many a thrill to be had here, even if some parts of the film are a bit corny. There’s also a splash of parochial triumphalism on display but this is mostly in the background. This version on release in Australia has been dubbed into American-English and it’s been done well but it takes a little getting used to. Still, if action movies and death-defying stunts are your thing, you’ll definitely find something to like in The Rescue.
Screenwriters: Wong Sze Man, Tan Yuli and Yaqing Zhi.
Principal cast:
Eddie Peng
Zhilei Xin
Zhang Jingyi
Yanlin Wang
Yingying Lan
Yutian Wang
Country: China
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 139 mins.
Australian release date: Friday 18 December 2020
Hold on to your popcorn and prepare for another action-packed movie from Chinese director Dante Lam in The Rescue; Lam has a great talent for choreographing and filming the most amazing stunts, as seen in his previous efforts Operation Mekong and Operation Red Sea. Not for the faint of heart, this graphic drama is set in Hainan on the South China Sea, where we are introduced to an Emergency Response Unit of China Rescue & Salvage, a sort of Chinese Coast Guard, who are dropped on to a burning oil rig, a crashed aeroplane sinking in the sea, a truck swept off a winding mountain road into a raging river and, ultimately, an exploding LNG transport ship. Phew!
The charismatic Eddie Peng stars, his fourth collaboration with Lam, and he’s very good as the brave captain, Gao Qian, whose men will follow him anywhere. When it’s not focussing on the extraordinary rescue sequences, the screenplay attempts to humanise these heroic men and women, whose credo is “giving the hope of life to others and saving the danger of death to [our]selves,” by showing us the backstory of some of them. Captain Gao is a widow with a young son, Cong Cong (the delightful Zhang Jingyi), who wants his dad to find him a new mum. Enter recent recruit, chopper pilot Fang Yulin (Zhilei Xin), who initially clashes with Gao but then begins to regard him as more than the hot-head she first thought he was. There’s also Zhao Cheng (Yanlin Wang), another helicopter pilot in the squad, who’s humming and hawing about finally having his wedding photos taken with wife Wen Shen (Yingying Lan). Unfortunately, these sequences don’t add much, except for those involving Gao and Cong Cong, and they really only serve as links between the four big action set-pieces.
And big they are! The Rescue begins with Gao hurling himself into a raging fire on a collapsing marine oil rig to save two wounded men and ends with an absolutely extraordinary spectacle on a burning ship carrying liquid natural gas. For these and the other dramatic scenes involving the truck in the river and the plane ditched in the sea, Lam and his crew filmed in the massive water tanks on the Baja Peninsula of Mexico first built for the filming of James Cameron’s Titanic. They were incredibly difficult to shoot, utilising all the skills of Oscar-winning DoP Peter Pau (he won his Academy Award for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and the film took over four months to record (and five years of pre- and post-production). Wherever possible, Lam wanted everything ‘real’, insisting that his movies have a feeling of reality. Not only did he purchase an old A320 Airbus for the plane crash scene, he also hired a gigantic crane to suspend the frame of the plane to shoot the interiors rather than build a set. He says, “I believe in filming what’s real. Everyone thinks filming is about camera movements and editing, but I think the actors can give a real response [when] they sense something real or unexpected.” He does, of course, have to use CG and other visual effects when necessary but there’s much less of these than there would be if The Rescue was shot in Hollywood.
A Dante Lam film is always going to be ‘big’ in every sense, usually grossing big receipts at the box office, and this one is too. While not quite on a par with his Operation films, there’s many a thrill to be had here, even if some parts of the film are a bit corny. There’s also a splash of parochial triumphalism on display but this is mostly in the background. This version on release in Australia has been dubbed into American-English and it’s been done well but it takes a little getting used to. Still, if action movies and death-defying stunts are your thing, you’ll definitely find something to like in The Rescue.
