High Forces 危机航线 (2024) Review: Despite Andy Lau’s Star Power, This Die Hard-on-a-Plane Action Thriller is Laughably Absurd

High Forces sees actor-producer Andy Lau and director Oxide Pang try to make their own version of Die Hard-on-a-plane action thriller that used to be populated by Hollywood in the ’90s (e.g., Passenger 57, Executive Decision and Air Force One). But despite Andy Lau’s star power and the thrilling action subgenre, High Forces is best described as a highly absurd plane hijacking thriller that I find it hard to believe a screen veteran like Andy Lau would consider participating in the first place.

Then again, this isn’t the first time Lau appeared in an embarrassingly inferior high-profile blockbuster after I Did It My Way earlier this year. He did bounce back in the showbiz satire The Movie Emperor and hostage thriller Crisis Negotiators, where the latter featured the actor in a memorable cameo appearance.

Back to High Forces, it’s not like he lacks trying as he gives his all except for all the wrong reasons. He plays Gao Haojun, a former Special Police officer-turned-security expert working for Hangyu Airlines. We learn that eight years ago in a flashback, Gao and his wife, Fu Yuan (Liu Tao) divorced. There’s a subsequent flashback later in the movie that Gao is responsible for causing their young daughter Xiaojun blind from a car accident. You see, he has a serious anger management issue and his impatient manner while stuck in traffic causes him to act irrationally. He also tends to throw tantrums in front of his long-suffering wife and his daughter hates him for that.

So, the earlier part of the movie focuses on Gao trying to reconcile with his ex-wife, who happens to be aboard the same airliner. Their daughter, now grown up as a young adult (Zhang Zifeng) is also on the plane with her. But just as Gao wanted to redeem his past mistake, a group of hijackers led by Mike (Qu Chuxiao) took over the plane flight mid-air. Like Gao, Mike is also a temperamental person suffering from bipolar disorder. He doesn’t take no for an answer and wouldn’t hesitate to kill passengers in cold blood to prove his point. He expected the CEO of Hangyu Airlines Li’s (Guo Xiaodong) wife Taiying (Zhang Yang) to wire-transfer US$500 million in 30 minutes or he would execute more passengers.

Now, it’s up to Gao to save the day but instead of a tense plane hijacking action thriller, Oxide Pang’s inept direction ruins everything. His penchant for jerky camerawork and staccato editing annoys me during the otherwise brutal action scenes. He even tries to spice up the action with the added slow-motion bullet effect at one point when Gao and Mike shoot each other. And yet, the action set pieces barely raise the pulse, even though I have to give credit to 63-year-old Andy Lau for still being able to impress with his physically demanding performance.

High Forces also explicitly highlights Gao and Mike’s respective rage-fuelled emotions, where Pang figures it’s a good idea to amplify how they feel visually using a different colour filter filling the entire screen. No, I kid you not as Gao and Mike get red and green colours respectively. The story, in the meantime, requires you to suspend your disbelief, which is fine since that’s how a Die Hard-style action thriller works. But there’s a huge difference between that and the one which truly tests one’s patience and intelligence. High Forces falls for the latter, where the movie grows increasingly silly and laughably bad. This is especially true during the climactic moment where Lau goes full Tom Cruise, where he is seen dangling outside the plane trying to make his way back into the cabin. Except for the entire scene is heavily executed in a shockingly poor and amateurish CGI.

Pang continues to go all-out and that is throwing every logic out of the window, leading to more ludicrous moments such as the one revolving around a daring stewardess doing something unthinkable that it’s hard not to laugh at the scene. But nothing comes close to the wildly preposterous ending, where Gao’s unbelievable action attempts to guide the plane during an emergency landing.

By the time the movie is over, I can’t believe what I saw in High Forces. How is this even passed as a major theatrical release after the movie reportedly underwent lengthy post-production is beyond me. Oxide Pang’s track record as a director has always been inconsistent but High Forces is easily one of his worst movies to date.