Extreme Crisis (1998)

Undescribable Perfection

Sorry, this movie sucks

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is one of those movies that had a lot of potential, but just didn't quite live up to it. It's apparently loosely based on that crazy doomsday cult in Japan that used Sarin gas - but in this case, the cult is much more competent, and received military training from Russia. The opening is of the cult's military trained members fighting a Japanese SWAT (or SDU as they call it) team, which has one survivor (one half of the main duo in the film).But then the leader gets captured in Hong Kong. So the cult wants him free. The Japanese want to extradite him. So both the Japanese cop and the cult visit Hong Kong. There the Japanese cop joins forces with a Hong Kong cop who sort of goes rogue, because he screwed things up somewhat, and because he's angry with how the lady cop who is in charge of the case is running things. Meanwhile the cult members start working on a big sarin gas bomb, in order to force the Hong Kong authorities to release the cult leader. And the lady cop handles tracking down the cult, but doesn't seem too concerned by things.Part of the trouble is that the action is often told from 3 viewpoints - the cult members, that of the duo, and that of the regular police (led by a lady cop). This can be confusing, and apparently one reviewer missed why the duo visited a school that the cultists were using as a base (they didn't stop randomly, they heard a police report).Also, since it's apparently a Japanese-Hong Kong production, language difficulties add some weirdness to it. The Hong Kong cop speaks Chinese, which gets subtitled okay. But the Japanese cop (and sometimes the Hong Kong cop lady and a few others) speak English, but is sometimes not the right words (or phrased oddly), and often is different from the subtitles. That doesn't help things.But the real problem is the action. There are a lot of gunfights, but somewhat they aren't as exciting as it should be. It's hard to put my finger on exactly, I guess for one, there really isn't a huge body count, at least not among the bad guys. But for another, the ending part of the movie involves a hostage situation, and there's just so many hostages, it's hard to see what is going on.I think there are a lot of comparisons to be made with John Woo's "Hard Boiled". Especially the ending. I wouldn't say this mimics that exactly, some aspects seem borrowed from Die Hard as well, but it falls far short of either movie. A lot of people get killed in it, but it's not overly bloody. There are some rather disturbing scenes of how people are killed, so definitely not something you want children to watch.I liked it, and the story is original enough that I didn't know what the ending was going to be like, but probably wouldn't want to watch it again.

Being a huge Shu Qi fan, when I got my DVD in the mail, I was very excited. I knew that she didn't really have a gigantic role in this film (only supporting actress), but that didn't matter. I immediately unwrapped the packaging, ripped open the case, and popped in the DVD. I never really have a very high expectation of the quality of Hong Kong action movies. In general the plots are fairly weak, the acting is usually pretty good given the writing that they have to work with, the special effects and CGI are more hilarious than realistic, and the subtitles are just a pure riot. But that's sometimes exactly what you're looking for - just something to kick back with your friends, pop open your favorite brand of beer, watch someone kick the living crap out of someone, and laugh hard. From the osnet of this movie, something was different. The opening scenes put me in a place that many a Jerry Bruckheimer / Don Simpson film has - on the edge of my seat, watching the good guys heroically get smoked and explosions going off in either large quantities, or quality. The plot is believable, especially given the terrorist attacks in the Japanese subways a few years back, 9/11, and Madrid - which is also a trademark of Bruckheimer (that being quasi-believable plots). The special effects were not something that reminded me of a Hong Kong film, it was more of a Holywood film. Even the musical score sounds like something pulled out of "The Rock." Midway through I was expecting to see Sean Connery come into a scene give his, "winners go home and F the prom queen" speech.In fact this movie paralleled "The Rock" in many ways. Terrorists go and steal some pretty bad stuff and try to use that as leverage to get what they want. The lock themselves inside a pretty defendable place, place their motion sensors and make themselves home. The calvary of Special Operations Team comes in and heroically dies (this is one of the cooler scenes in the movie). Then it's up to the pair of guys who have been chasing them from the get go to save the day. The acting is pretty good, in comparison to your average Bruckheimer film, and i was interested throughout the movie. If you're a fan of Bruckheimer, you'd like this movie quite well. The only movie from Bruckheimer that I'd ever rate over an 8 would be Pirates of the Caribbean, which is why I'd only give this a 6.5 / 10. If you love Shu Qi or like Bruckheimer, see this one.If you are both, get this one.

'Extreme crisis' is a pretty decent action movie that gets better as it goes along. Their are a fair few familiar plot devices (we have 2 minutes to disarm this bomb before we're all blown to smithereens!), but the action is tense and refreshing.It's good to see an action film that is precisely that, and not trying to incorporate humour and drama everywhere where it doesn't belong.I bought the DVD for Shu Qi's appearence, but her screen-time in minimal in the role of the newsreader/girlfriend.

A truly superfluous film that redefines the meaning of bad. This movie is just plain...BAD. But the worst thing about EXTREME CRISIS is that it doesn't even try to make sense. Things and scenes just seem to exist in order to move the story forward, even though the existence of said things and scenes makes absolutely no sense. Perhaps the worst example of logical screenwriting I've ever seen.If you can stand a movie that a lot of things blow up but makes absolutely ZERO sense, than EXTREME CRISIS is for you. For instance, our two heroes are driving around looking for the villains, when one of them just decides, out of the blue, to stop in at a school -- and voila! The bad guys just happened to be using the school's labs to cook up their super duper evil weapon! How convenient!It's hard to describe the foolishness of EXTREME CRISIS. It really is the type of movie where you show its screenplay to film students and tell them, over and over, "Don't do this! This doesn't make sense! Never ever do this!"3 out of 10.