From smoke and flames, drama emerges

Film's entertainment laced with brotherly love and melodrama

In step with American trends toward firefighting in both feature film and television, Hong Kong's latest drama As the Light Goes Out, is a tense disaster opera of personal ambition, betrayal, greed and devotion. Directed by Derek Kwok, As the Light Goes Out follows the melodramatic, and vaguely homoerotic, brotherhood of a team of firefighters in the Long Ku Tan fire department. While the story takes place in the world of fighting fires, it is heavily doused with personal drama such that interpersonal relationships are put at the forefront of the movie - drama that happens to take place in a disaster zone. Hu Jun gives a deadpan monologue about the things firefighters hallucinate about when in black-out smoke, a narrative technique designed to unite the characters with their insecurities and past failures in a literal crucible of fire. Throughout the movie, multiple plot threads center on different characters to convey the breadth and width of disaster, and all the right pieces come together to form a black swan event: a spectacular cinematographic catastrophe worth its big budget.

To be fair, all this has been done before. Johnny To, one of Hong Kong's most prolific action-drama directors (most famous for his gangster films) tackled firefighting in his 1997 film Lifeline (《十万火急》). As the Light Goes Out is the latest installment in a genre that has flip-flopped in and out of mediocre popularity over the past 20 years, following the coming and going of firefighter films in the US. Because of such lukewarm popularity, As the Light Goes Out racked up a total of $11.8 million (8.9 million euros) after a run in both the mainland and Hong Kong.

We begin the film in what turns out to be an internal hearing, where Sam (Nicholas Tse) is being punished and demoted for a failed rescue attempt and is blamed for the failure by his classmate Yip (安志杰, Andy On). He is on his last day with the team before being shipped off to an obscure post somewhere else on the island. After his punishment, he is relegated to taking out the trash and cooking soup. When a wine factory goes up in flames, he ends up at the scene. While the fire is put out without problem, he notes the proximity of the makeshift hovel to a gas pipeline and to a pressure valve linked to the system that provides electricity to all Hong Kong. Another uncontrolled fire would cause the entire system to detonate. Of course the inevitable happens, mostly due to an incompetent manager (Patrick Tam) demanding the activation of the entire power grid, which results in an explosion, which knocks out all the electricity in Hong Kong , hence the film's title.

On a fire site, the biggest terror is in the thick smoke. You have no idea where danger lurks. With only the sound of your breath in the darkness, it is like entering a ghost town. No matter how many comrades you have, ready to stick together through thick and thin, you will face your demons, alone in the dark.

As the Light Goes Out eventually becomes a survival film. While we are supposed to see the collision of the different plot threads inside the film, we are mostly left wondering why time seems to be inconsistent; the camera lingers on some characters, and the order of events seems lopsided. Characters are caught both outside and within the burning power plant, now set to violently collapse. One group of firefighters is desperately trying to get in while another tries to get out. The disintegrating plant becomes a hell, with bottomless pits of fire, collapsing ceilings and hallways that lead to nowhere.

Perhaps most indicative of the Hong Kong action drama, Kwok's firefighters are caught in the same kind of bullet-time wire-choreography ballet as Chow Yun Fat (周润发) in John Wu's Hardboiled (《辣手神探》). Only this time, ladders, sweating men in coveralls, and debris are flying, instead of bullets and blood. At one point, Ocean (Hu Jun) looks like he is about to meet his maker by falling onto a floor covered with water that is being charged by a live wire: a boat of barrels flies out of nowhere at impossible speed, as he falls: the barrels, dropkicked beneath Ocean by his fellow firefighter Chill (余文乐, Shawn Yue), and he is saved from an otherwise crispy demise.

As the Light Goes Out achieves what it aims to be: an entertaining film, laced with brotherly melodrama. It misses the mark in some areas: many of the recurring themes of traumatic failures and character flaws seem like cutting room additions at the eleventh hour, relegated to mere vignettes. Sam's girlfriend Emily (Alice Li) leaves him after a spate of phone calls that he fails to answer - a short plot disruption featuring Emily putting on her flight attendant uniform and walking out the door while narrating her goodbye letter over the phone, a not-so-subtle reference to Wong Kar Wai's (王家卫's) Chungking Express (《重庆森林》). Of course, the appearance of Jackie Chan will always help any film, and the PR team for As the Light Goes Out milked his seconds-long cameo with a lengthy media campaign.

And yet, for all its lack of pizzazz: substituting flashy fireworks for what could have been first-rate film-making, As the Light Goes Out makes 116 minutes go by easily. Nicholas Tse holds the film with his brooding aura, grounding As the Light Goes Out's human element with realism, as opposed to the military-style barking of other characters.

Whether you are in for the explosions, sexy sweaty men, or the melodrama, the film delivers. As to the gravity of the firefighter's plight, there remains a question mark. "Fire is a serious thing," it seems to argue, "but bigger fires are better."

Courtesy of the World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com

The World of Chinese