Full Alert



The operative term when it comes to Full Alert (1997) is “gritty.” Full Alert was the first movie Ringo Lam made when he returned to Hong Kong after making Maximum Risk (1996), and he lets his darker instincts rule the screen.


"Just ask O.J. Simpson."

During the opening credits we see the police quarantining an apartment building where the residents are getting sick. The source of the sickness turns out to be a dead body in the building’s water tank. That gritty enough for you? If not, still upcoming is a rolling gun battle in the middle of a crowded street, someone beat to death with a shovel, what looks like the most painful non-fatal motorcycle accident ever, and an oh-so memorable scene where a cop has to retrieve his gun out of a barrel of soupy garbage.

Surly Inspector Pao (Ching Wan Lau) quickly arrests a suspect in the water tank murder, a man named Mak (Francis Ng). Mak quickly confesses to the murder but Pao thinks there is more to the story. Plans to an unidentified vault and bomb making equipment were found in Mak’s apartment. Pao correctly deduces that Mak’s willingness to confess to the murder is protect his partners in the vault job, and those partners, a violent Taiwanese gang,  will try to free Mak from custody. Despite the police’s efforts to the contrary Mak escapes from prison and Pao has to race to discover which vault Mak and his partners are planning on robbing. Things get personal when Mak begins sending Pao messages threatening Pao’s wife and son.


"Wheeeeeeee! Let's do it again!"

As I said, Full Alert is high on grit, but it is a little low on logic. Mak apparently killed the man found in the water tank because the man designed the vault and knew its weakness, but why leave the body where it would bring down a huge police investigation? Why does the sergeant at a police roadblock let the Taiwanese gang through even though he recognizes one of them? This leads to a great car chase, one of the best I’ve seen in a while, but it seemed to me the whole thing could have been avoided easily. I’m also a little fuzzy on why characters continually give descriptions of the vault’s security that turn out to be completely wrong when we actually see the vault. Perhaps, like many HK films, Full Alert was largely improvised and no one knew what anybody else said about the vault.

These flaws are easy to overlook, however. Pao is an interesting character, and the movie builds tension well as the heist approaches. The escalation of hostility between Pao and Mak climaxes with an ending as bleak as any in Lam’s oeuvre, and that’s saying something. Unfortunately he followed this movie up with the rather limp thriller The Suspect (1998) and then eventually went back to making… sigh… Jean-Claude Van Damme movies.

Posted: Tue - July 27, 2004 at      

©