“AS THE LIGHT GOES OUT” is one amazing movie that attempts a lot.
It tries very hard, to cramp fiery action, high drama, family angst and buddy obligations, all within a single day’s occurrence. You bet it leaves little chance for character development.
You will find an irksome sprinkle of wise sayings extolling the doctrines of life-and-death, goodness gracious. For spouting this much, you know this dude is doomed to die. And he did vanquish as a hero, swallowed by roaring flames.
It’s kind of a story retelling culled from the popular Hong Kong TVB high dramas or competitive films such as the recent lack luster ” Out of Inferno”.
This theme is not new, is formulaic actually, but it reigns supreme on the Director Derek Kwok’s visual and storytelling treatment board.
The Director does an admirable job to pull vital bits of scenarios together and assemble them neatly on a single stylized platter.
So the sum of it all is either you get impressed or you don’t.
I follow Derek Kwok’s body of work.
This one ain’t going to be his best.
”AS THE LIGHT GOES OUT” has all the ingredients of a blockbuster.
Derek Kwok (“Gallants” in 2010) carefully picked his ensemble comprising of Hong Kong cinematic greats like Nicholas Tse, Shawn Yue, Simon Yam and Hu Jun.
The story occurs on a single night during Christmas Eve when a team of chummy firefighters – chief Sam (Nicholas Tse), Chill (Shawn Yue), Tao (Simon Yam), Ocean (Hu Jun) from Hong Kong’s Pillar Point Division are assigned to diminish a threatening fiery blaze at a local winery.
It looks like a great job accomplished, until the blaze reignites from the alcohol warehouse to a nearby power plant.
What follows?
The entire Hong Kong is plunged into abject darkness as the fire rages.
“AS THE LIGHT GOES OUT” is a poignant and powerful film in terms of fiery action and stupendous visual effects.
Kudos to convincing performances by the leads.
The film is both riveting and suspenseful and keeps you guessing who’s going to be the next victim to be claimed by the raging flames.
Or who’s going to be rescued in the nick of time.
For fans of disaster movies, this one’s for you.
This film could have been rendered so much better.
But then, what’s sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.
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