At the movie premiere of "Breaking Point", Lin Chaoxian, the chief director of the film, said that this is a "pure Hong Kong film", and it is also the second time he has shot a "Hong Kong film" after shooting a number of "new mainstream blockbusters" such as "Operation Red Sea" in the mainland, and the style continues the previous films such as "The Informant" and "The Witness". And the film's starring Zhang Jiahui, William Chan, Liang Luoshi, etc. are also all Hong Kong actors.
As advertised before the film's release, the "scale of the film" is unexpected. This manifests itself in two main ways;First, there are a lot of violent and bloody scenes in the film. The film does not deliberately use a subtle approach when performing, but presents it very realistically. For example, at the beginning of the film, the picture is a close-up of the face of a suspect being stepped on the ground with one foot, and the camera pans up, and the face of the protagonist in the film, the policeman Li Zhenbang (played by Zhang Jiahui), gradually appears. This unconventional shooting technique suddenly increases the sense of scene in the picture. And the various bloody fights in the film, the use of bullets with their hands at the scene after being hit by bullets in the thigh, and the burning of elevators by drug traffickers are all very real and tragic. The second is the fate of the positive characters in the film. Not only did many police officers die in the process of anti-narcotics, but the two main policemen Li Zhenbang and Jiang Ming (played by William Chan) also paid a heavy price in the end. After Li Zhenbang's son was caught by drug traffickers, he was burned alive as a "carbon man";And Jiang Ming, as an undercover policeman, also died in the end. Generally, commercial genre films with this kind of theme always end in a complete victory of **, and there are not many movies like "Breaking Point" that depict the harshness of anti-drug work so cruelly.
Action and gunfight scenes are what Hong Kong films have always been best at, and director Lin Chaoxian is one of them. This film can be said to be fought from beginning to end, all kinds of gunfights, close fights and car chases are filmed very excitingly, the style is sharp, and the fists are to the flesh, it can be seen that from the actors to the crew, they have put a lot of energy and thought.
But the most important thing about the excitement of a movie depends on what kind of characters are created. The film mainly depicts the fate of four characters, in addition to Li Zhenbang and Jiang Ming, there are also the fate of drug trafficking leader Han Yang (played by Tan Junyan) and female drug maker Yingxiu (played by Liang Luoshi), it is speculated that the creator wants to reflect the complexity of anti-drug work in an all-round way from the four perspectives of police, undercover police, drug dealers and ordinary people who are involved, but from the actual viewing effect, there are too many characters and clues to cause the narrative to be cumbersome and messy. As some netizens reflected, the line of Yingxiu in the film has a bit of a "non-trivial branch" flavor, "Even if it is cut off, it will not affect the integrity of the story." The reason why it is retained is probably that the creator wants to form a set of contrasts with the fate of Li Zhenbang's son through the experience of Yingxiu's daughter Yuling.
"Too full of narrative" may be a common problem in Hong Kong films in recent years, and "Breaking Point" is the same. The plot and rhythm change too quickly, and the emotions of the movie have been filled, so that the audience has no respite, such as the character Jiang Ming, who is the most important and brilliant in the film, but the film did not dig deep into this character, and his motives for being an undercover police officer were only briefly explained, especially at the end of the film, when Li Zhenbang told him that he could return to the police force, he was "bent on going back" to arrest the drug traffickers, and some viewers reported that this character was a bit like a "robot". If the creator can depict the inner world of the characters more real and delicate, so that the characters can show more of their life side, I believe it will move the audience even more.