The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell movie review Aaron Kwok, Lau Ching-wan and Louis Koo in Herman
3/5 stars
Having taken the reins of 2019’s The White Storm 2: Drug Lords and now The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell – both of them thematic sequels that tell unrelated stories but have retained the first film’s storylines about a drugs cartel, use of a star-studded cast and extravagant appetite for firearms and explosives – Yau looks like he has settled into a nice groove with his action blockbusters.However, as in the second film, Yau’s The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell makes a mockery of the theme of brotherhood that was key to Chan’s original. Here, loyalty becomes the butt of a running joke as an undercover policeman is repeatedly “saved” against his will by his oblivious criminal pals.
The film begins with a bombastic shoot-out between the Hong Kong police and a gang of heavily armed drug dealers, headed by the Thai-born Suchat (Lau Ching-wan), that quickly exposes his criminal colleague Wing (Louis Koo Tin-lok) as an undercover policeman named Yuen.
Suchat rescues his seriously injured buddy Billy (Aaron Kwok Fu-shing) amidst the gunfire – without knowing that he is also working undercover, and is a close friend of Yuen’s.
Yau doubles down on this unintendedly funny twist by showing Yuen and Billy, whose real name is Heng, laughing hysterically behind Suchat’s back earlier.
After poor Heng is reluctantly dragged off to Thailand’s Golden Triangle with the gang, The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell, a Hong Kong-China co-production, takes a risky turn as it patiently charts the rise of Suchat to become the new work partner of the region’s most formidable drug lord, played by veteran TV actor Gallen Lo Ka-leung.
The film, written and directed by Yau and which culminates in an incendiary climax that will no doubt satisfy viewers who enjoy seeing things blown up, proves far more interesting when viewed as an epic about the drug trade set in an exotic foreign milieu than as an undercover-police drama that traces the limits of deception.
Ruthless in command yet unflinchingly loyal, Suchat is a larger-than-life anti-hero who thinks only about getting rich with his “brothers”. More ambiguous are the cases of Heng and Yuen, who, we are often reminded, have respectively taken a bullet and killed for Suchat in their attempts to gain his trust.
The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell certainly doesn’t have the narrative deftness to make sense of these moral paradoxes. But as a mega-budget genre offering that goes to considerable lengths to transport its audience to a menacing foreign land, it does leave an impression.
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