Posted in: Movies, Trailer | Tagged: blockbusters, chinese blockbuster, dante lam, eddie peng, movies, the rescue
"The Rescue": I Want to See Dante Lam's Chinese Action Blockbuster, Still in Coronavirus Limbo
The Coronavirus outbreak has been a disaster for the movie business all over the world. Of course, when it hit China back, it prompted the movie industry to shut down. Productions were halted, cinemas were closed, and the big Chinese New Year blockbuster releases were cancelled. Three movies, Detective Chinatown 3, Lost in Russia and The Rescue were expected to open to big box office returns, but they were cancelled.
The Rescue was the one blockbuster that was a big-budget action movie. I still want to see it.
It's directed by Dante Lam, a Hong Kong filmmaker who cut his teeth on stylish cop thrillers before moving onto big-budget action thrillers from the Mainland. His previous movie, Operation: Red Sea, was about a Chinese Navy Special Forces team evacuating hundreds of Chinese civilians from the Arabian Peninsula while pursued by terrorists. It was a stylish, brutal, bloody, massive action movie and made $579 million at the Chinese box office in 2018. It virtually made Lam the Chinese answer to Michael Bay, albeit a lot more coherent.
Rescue Action!
The Rescue meant to usher a new trend in big-budget Chinese action movies. Instead of cops or soldiers hunting and shooting bad guys, it features first responders. It looks like a big-budget movie version of Fox Television's 9-1-1. The heroes are members of the China Rescue & Salvage division of the Chinese Ministry of Transport. Chinese blockbusters are no longer about killing enemies to protect the nation but rescuing citizens from disaster now.
And hey, I found an English-dubbed trailer.
A British critic friend of mine saw a press screening and liked it. At this moment, there are no plans to release the movie, since cinemas in China are still closed. That means no simultaneous release in US cinemas since there's a possibility that they might get closed here too.