Customs Frontline
“Customs Frontline” reminds me of an ‘80s-era John Woo film, where ideas of bloodshed and friendship and brotherhood are front and center, and the story is almost incidental. It’s the interpersonal elements of the story that are the most impactful, especially as director Herman Yau drops a final reveal that throws everything into focus, and leaves the film on a moment of emotional catharsis that Woo would probably choke up at watching.
The main characters in the film are Chow Ching-lai (Nicholas Tse) and Cheung Wan-nam (Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau). They are officers for Hong Kong’s Customs and Excise Department, and are very close as mentor and student. When they appear to uncover an arms smuggling operation, they ended up going in their own directions- Chow as part of a joint task force to uncover the dealers, but for Cheung, it’s best to take some time away. That divergent of paths is going to cause friction that will last the rest of their lives.
Erica Li’s screenplay has a subplot about a warlord who is smuggling in the arms so that his country can defend itself that, one would think, would be a more substantial part of story, but thematically, “Customs Frontline” is less interested in the geopolitics of why a country would purchase arms illegally than trying to maintain integrity in the face of such activity. Another big player in the film is the company whose barges are being used for the smuggling, and seeing how the pieces fall into place is one of the film’s great pleasures. This is about a corrupt world, and the struggle to stay on the right side of things when it appears to be a challenge is difficult. The sense of conflicted morality in this film is right out of Woo’s work, and it’s a big part of why “Customs Frontline” worked for me- it’s not afraid to get to the complexities of the world, and not simplify it for the sake of cheap thrills. That’s a big part of why the final scenes of the film work as well as they do- they aren’t generic platitudes, but asking for understanding of why some people might end up in a certain situation.
As an action film, “Customs Frontline” is fine. There are not any particular moments that excited me about the way Yau and Tse stage action, but none of the sequences feel like they exist solely to have action sequences in the film; I just was not as thrilled by them as I was the ideas in the film. That seems like a dig at the film, but honestly, it’s meant as a compliment.
