Movie Review: As the Light Goes Out/救火英雄

It’s a new year, and a new movie.

And the same old me.

As the Light Goes Out/救火英雄 is the latest in a string of local blockbusters, movies with big casts, big budgets, and big special effects.

It’s the story of a group of intrepid firefighters in a remote fire station who end up battling to save fire victims, each other, and the city of Hong Kong.

Because you gotta have goals.

The film operates on several levels, and some of them are better than others. Let me get the bad parts out of the way first. The gigantic lapses of logic in this film are astounding.

This scrīpt asks so much of you it would make JFK blush.

The film opens with a fake PSA about joining the Fire Service and features a Jackie Chan cameo. In it, Hong Kong is devastated by an apocalypse triggered by an unseasonal typhoon.

The camera pans out from the TV showing the PSA to a group of firemen who soundly ridicule it.

Which is odd because it is essentially a thumbnail sketch of the plot of the film.

A fire in a dodgy alcohol factory becomes the literal and figurative catalyst for a fire that ends up destroying a power plant.

Because when you build a massive natural gas pipeline, you don’t put a fenced safety zone around your pipeline, you just run it past buildings without worrying about what they have in them, even if it’s wildly explosive stuff. Like booze.

Not that As the Light Goes Out/救火英雄 ever really explains how the fire at the power plant starts, because from what I could see it didn’t have anything to do with the fire at the winery.

But you have other things to worry about, like hosting a group of school kids on a field trip.

On Christmas Eve.

A group of kids whose teacher doesn’t do a head count when they get on a bus to leave. She just asks the 6-year old class prefect if everyone is on board.

Because kids need to learn participation and responsibility.

They also apparently learn how to make paper airplanes that can survive a gas-fueled holocaust inside a gigantic burning building. This plane made of combustible material thrown by a kid in a building he’s never been in before has no problem finding his firefighter dad who just happens to be part of the responding unit.

Happens all the time.

You know, field trip on Christmas eve to a power plant that turns into a raging inferno.

With a typhoon coming. Yes, it’s a surprise.

Because no one in Hong Kong ever gets notice of typhoons until they’re just three hours away. 

Especially typhoons that will be strong enough to warrant the #8 signal.

But the typhoons are really polite; they stop raining literally on a moment’s notice, and that moment just happens to be a dramatic beat.

But fear not; the city-wide blackout (ensuing from the one single electricity source for a city of seven million people) is exhaustively covered by the news.

Broadcasting to people who have no electricity for their TVs, radios, computers, or phone chargers.

When news breaks, they fix it.

But if you can let go of all of that, there’s a lot to like about As the Light Goes Out/救火英雄.

It looks fabulous.

Even on the dust-coated Dynasty screen.

The cinematography and lighting are really impressive.

Some of the CG is impressive too. The larger stuff isn’t, but I give local movies a pass because you simply can’t stage big explosions here.

Besides, can any of us really say we know what an exploding power plant should look like?

The acting in As the Light Goes Out/救火英雄  is really good.

The main as well as the supporting cast have nothing to be ashamed of in their performances.

Nicolas Tse, Shawn Yue Man Lok and Andy On Chi Kit play three men who graduated fire training together and went on very different paths.

Simon Yam is the grizzled veteran facing retirement.

William Chan plays the fresh-faced rookie.

They just got here off the bus from central casting, but so what?

It’s a movie about firefighters, what do you expect?

Besides, they all play their roles convincingly, and I liked how normal they all seemed.

A subplot about rivalries is played very well, and I wish it had been a greater focus of the film’s time and energy.

I also thought the film handled the current tensions between Hong Kong and the mainland in a very interesting way. Issues of language and leadership are directly referenced, and the film simply presents them without taking sides.

At one point, a fireman announces that “the mainland rescue team has arrived.” This is an obvious reference to the recent ferry disaster, but again we’re not told how to respond to it. As a consequence, the responses can (and will) go either way.

I think that line is bound to draw some laughter in Hong Kong. So too will the almost caricatured nature of the portrayal of Hu Jun’s veteran Chinese firefighter Ocean.

At 42, he scored 1,000 points on his physical fitness.  Without breathing apparatus, he can enter a smoke-filled building and see the layout.  He can memorize the blueprint of an entire power plant in minutes and recall the minutest detail with absolute clarity.

He’s the poster child for civil servant rectitude, and in some ways he’s stepped right out of a propaganda movie.

But the other parts of his character are not so easily dismissed.  Thanks to Hu Jun’s acting skills, Ocean becomes much more human and likeable. 

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In fact, all of the characters are very human, whether good or bad.

I really enjoyed the characters and acting in As the Light Goes Out/救火英雄 .

I also really enjoyed the cinematography.

The film always looks good, and at times it even veers into a Johnnie To-like style that could almost be called visual pornography.

Unfortunately that style is sometimes used to support or exploit the film’s indulgence in large doses of melodrama.  It was frustrating to see such good camera work and acting being spent on plot contrivances that were cheaply exploitative.

I liked the acting and visuals of  As the Light Goes Out/救火英雄; I just didn’t really care for the story or the way it unfolded.