The Koreans join forces with Lee Yin-ming ( Nick Cheung) and his junior Fan Ka-ming (Shawn Yue) from the Counter-Terrorism Response Unit (CTRU) and interrupt Helios’ deal in a parking lot. Park Woo-cheol (Choi Si-won, “Dragon Blade”), the top agent for the National Intelligence Service (NIS), is ordered to protect Choi, while Hong Kong-based agent Shim Mi-kyung (Yoon Ji-ni) navigates them around the city. Big (Mike Leeder), will trade the device in Hong Kong, top South Korean weapons expert Col. Choi Min-ho (Ji Jin-hee, “Perhaps Love,” “The Old Garden”), is dispatched to recover it. When sources reveal that Helios and his Middle Eastern buyer, Mr. The world’s smallest nuclear weapon, DC8 (a South Korean invention), has been stolen by Interpol’s most wanted criminals: Helios (Chang Chen) and his sidekick, Messenger (Janice Man, “The Midnight After”). Ironically, whereas the Hong Kong police in “Cold War” aspired to be responsible, transparent and civic-minded, bolstering the city’s reputation as “the safest place in Asia” here, they’re forced to take orders from Up North, resorting to methods that are anything but by-the-book. in China and Hong Kong, this blockbuster could sell like uranium in Asian genre ancillary.Īccording to the filmmakers, the Chinese title, which translates as “Equator,” suggests that their characters have to take a lot of heat, while a sense of impending doom is also conveyed by the English title, “Helios” - named after the Greek sun god whose son Panoptes couldn’t control his father’s chariot and set Earth on fire. In light of Hong Kong’s recent political upheavals, the concept of a “great whatsit” ticking away a la “Kiss Me Deadly” - ready to decimate the city and her core values - is a provocative metaphor, whichever side of the fence viewers find themselves on. Like a Boeing 747 on autopilot, the production is superbly tooled on a technical level yet remains somewhat mechanical and bloodless in its plotting and characterization. The writing-directing duo of Longman Leung and Sunny Luk impressively up their game from their major 2012 hit, “Cold War,” orchestrating a stellar pan-Asian cast and making prudent use of an $18 million budget to field a war of arms and ideologies with a teasing cliffhanger ending. When a doomsday device is up for grabs in Hong Kong, the city becomes a potential Ground Zero in “ Helios,” a spy action-thriller that reps a savvy model of Hong Kong-Chinese co-production.
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