Summary
The setup sounds like a gag, but this surprisingly fun film comes with some great throwback action and a terrific set of villains.
Who would have thought that the world of phone scams was so explosive? We’ve all been on the receiving end of an organised scammer’s spiel about our new phone bundles. In Oxide Pang’s THE BIG CALL (巨额来电), there’s a crack squad of detectives on the case with enough funding to dethrone a Nigerian prince.
Lin Yahai (Joseph Chang) is a scam tycoon who runs a massive call centre out of Thailand, targeting everyone from the elite to struggling students. Hong Kong cop Ding (Cheney Chen) is on the case, and will stop at nothing to bring the syndicate down.
There was a time in Hong Kong cinema history when the over-the-top cop action flick was king, the kind Oxide Pang has been bringing back through The Detective and Conspirators. Like their forebears, the whole idea is to reinforce the notion that the ‘good guys’ are competently doing something about a faceless problem, be it terrorism or cyber crime. Here the Elite Anti-Telecom Fraud Center has the kind of tech that wouldn’t look out of place on the bridge of the USS Enterprise.
So it’s strange that the MVP of THE BIG CALL is Gwei Lun-mei as Lin’s lover and call centre matron Liu Lifang. Coming with more backstory than any of the other characters, her dream of owning property on Hennessy Road in Hong Kong is complete with a reference to Ivy Ho’s 2010 film Crossing Hennessy. She’s a badass, and is almost matched by the film only other major female character, undercover cop Xu Xiaotu (Jiang Mengjie).
Male leads Chen and Chang look like cardboard cutouts in comparison, but at least they are involved in some of the best action sequences. A chase plows into a shanty town, which is reminiscent of the original Police Story but nowhere near as iconic. It spills out onto a parade with elephants (because it’s Thailand) where it all gets impressively explodey. No pachyderms are harmed though.
The slick cinematography and impressive set design puts Pang’s film in a slightly higher class than some of its contemporaries. The random use of a GoPro style of shooting puts the viewer in the action, but does jar with the high quality of the rest of the photography.
THE BIG CALL may not hit all of the right numbers, but you never get a sense that Pang or anybody else involved was phoning it in. The emotionally overwrought conclusion might leave us on a bit of a bummer, but it does provide another nice moment for Gwei Lun-mei. You’ll also never give out personal information over the phone again.
2018 | Hong Kong | DIRECTOR: Oxide Chun Pang | WRITER: Liu Hua, Oxide Chun Pang | CAST: Cheney Chen, Joseph Chang, Gwei Lun-mei, Jiang Mengjie | DISTRIBUTOR:Universe Films Distribution, New York Asian Film Festival (US) | RUNNING TIME: 123 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4 July 2018 (NYAFF)
