Wonderful character development!

Really Surprised!

Good concept, poorly executed.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The film began with a crashed planes being inspected by an officer from MSS (Ministry of State Security, China's version of CIA and FBI combined), followed by an nuclear facility in Korea being attacked and an important object taken.The story is about a black market trade taking place in Hong Kong of a South Korean nuclear weapon named DP8, which is the smallest nuclear weapon ever created. (In reality, South Korea is not supposed to have any nuclear weapons) A task force comprised of Hong Kong police, Korean Intelligence and an enlisted physicist sets out to defuse with the situation.In the middle of the film the MSS official from mainland China intervened with a secret higher priority, but eventually they are all bested by the criminal master mind named Helios.This film is paced in a fashion favored by Chinese (but not by Americans from the reviews I saw). Every twist of the plot left me puzzled with some more questions, yet despite being prepared for surprises, when the big reveal happened, I was surprised.Elements catering to audience from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Korea are obvious. However, this film is not strong on character building, I'm not even sure who is the main character of the film, since non of the characters' personality is deeply depicted.Story of this film is not ended, as the criminal mastermind is still at large. A continuing film is expected.

I gave 2 stars just for the firefighting scenes, if without considering this very small and unimportant part, then it should get only 1 star or even less. Again, a lousy screenplay with terrible and awkward dialog, the conversation between every two persons or three persons were so awkward and illogical, especially when the guy who played the high ranking official from China tried to deliver his bullshitting national security crap, the guy just turned into an obnoxious moron, the logic of his reasoning about holding the nuclear weaponry in Hong Kong, then got excuse to discuss and negotiate this situation was just absurd and ridiculous, even a low I.Q. moron would think it was stupid.At the very beginning of the movie, we saw a crashed airplane, then we saw a young woman from China visited the crashing site. It was a night scene, yet this female moron still unbelievably wore dark sunglasses! As soon as this scene appeared on the screen, my immediate thought was: "WTF?!" And from then on, ridiculous scene after scene accompanied with the stupidest and the most awkward dialog kept coming up.The actor who played the so-called "Helios" was definitely a terrible wrong cast, a skinny guy looked like a junkie without showing any believable cunning abilities to be a well-known international weaponry smuggler. Then there was his bodyguard, another "WTF?!" casting again. Casting pretty and sexy flesh and meat to play a dangerous, murderous role, even it may be necessary, this young woman was absolutely inserted just for the eye-candy to boost the box office, but it's still a very formulaic and stupid appendix role.The guy who played the highest Hong Kong police officer was another wrong choice for such important role, the guy with a botox cosmetic face and a sissy hairdo only gave the viewers another unconvincing, much too light weighted lamer impression.The professor was unfortunately given terrible dialog to almost every occasion, and his formulaic image of a bookworm nerd was a funny bow tie!Two handsome Korean male actors were good; at least the plastic cosmetic jobs were great. :)

I went to see Helios with no preconceived idea of the critics response and fearing the worse but I was pleasantly surprised and had a good thrill thanks to a few decent action scenes and I felt entertained throughout, which I cannot say about Cold War, one of the film makers previous effort. The cast was good and I loved the way each country was presenting itself in a very good light but different from one another. Modern movie clichés if you like...Anyway,it had the style one associates with the directors but again, unlike Cold War, it actually looked like HK and made it an OTT version of the city which suited the movie ambitious concept(some may say pretentious). At times walking the fine line between slick and cheesy, it got me involved and I will go and see the sequel.A good actioner with enough pizzaz to satisfy fans of Asian commercial movies.

From the writers-directors of Cold War, multiply their previous budget by a few times, with a cast of who's who from Korea, China and Hong Kong, come Helios, the most logic defying film I have seen this year. Synopsis - A portable nuclear device, DC8, has been stolen from South Korea by a ruthless criminal (Chang Chen) and his accomplice (Janice Man). As the weapon will change hands in Hong Kong, Lee (Nick Cheung) from the territory's Counter Terrorism Response Unit sets up a task force, which includes police officer Fan (Shawn Yue), to deal with the crisis. He enlists physics professor Siu (Jacky Cheung) as an adviser and has to work with South Korean weapon experts Choi (Ji Jin Hee) and Pok (Choi Si Won). Despite their efforts, the elusive criminal mastermind, Helios, is always a step ahead of Lee.Review - The whole movie is based on a MacGuffin which at first I thought is a weapon, but later on it becomes a criminal mastermind. The actors talk and talk non-stop in such an overly serious tone and wear one single frowning/brooding/angry/nondescript expression throughout. There is so much lambo humbo mambo jumbo spewing out which might as well be nonsense to me. First rule of the thumb is show me, don't tell me. For example, everybody keeps proclaiming the power of the bomb but I just couldn't feel the danger. At one time I even turned to my wife and said "I seriously hope Hong Kong gets entirely destroyed". Then right at the end of the movie somebody has the bright idea to put title cards to show the statistics of the what if disaster if the bomb did explode. That made me feel so dumb and when I watch a movie that is one feeling I never want to have. Second rule for me is I never want to see the strings. If I see the strings of the puppeteer, the game is over. I frigging see the strings everywhere. I give one example - the filmmakers feel a need to humanize Chang Chen's villain that they write the Macau scene. IMHO the entire Macau episode is one long and useless scene. If you take that redundant scene out, I have a feeling the film would have tightened up more. There is nothing new here. The action scenes, the story idea, I have seen before in better lesser films. Nothing here coalesce in any meaningful way. The plot is unnecessarily convoluted when it should be immediate. There are just too many players here. Other than the nationalities I mentioned, there are Turkish, Sikh, Caucasians and they even parachute in Americans and Anglo Saxsons, verbally. Every character acts and looks like they are double-crossers or triple-crossers. I couldn't care for anyone and I didn't mind if all the idiots die. After awhile we already knew who Helios is way before the fella was revealed. Damn hate seeing the puppeteers' strings, heck I think they are more like ropes than strings. As if one movie is not enough, the movie ends on a contrived cliffhanger note that screams in your face that this is just the first act of a longer film. We would be dumbasses if we even buy tickets for the sequel. The only consolation is that we had free passes to the movie. God forbid I pay for this rubbish. But if the filmmakers make the sequel to Cold War, that would be a different story.