In Autumn 1990, Chinese police Captain Zhong Cheng (Wang Qianyuan) was not having a good day. It was his first day on the force at Changpu, and when he rushed to investigate an armed robbery taking place in the heart of the city he was kidnapped by the masked gang. They were led by a man nicknamed The Falcon (Daniel Wu) and he taunted the cop in the back of the getaway van carrying them away from the scene of the crime at high speed, ordering him at gunpoint to tell them a joke, and if The Falcon did not laugh, he would shoot. This proves unnecessary when the police cars chasing them draw closer: they criminal places his hood over the cop's head and pushes him out of the back of the van, where he is picked up and arrested...
Caught in Time was based on a true story, though you may not be surprised to learn its big screen incarnation had been considerably embroidered, but it is true a criminal gang went on a spree for the first few years of the nineteen-nineties in China. Director Lau Ho-Leung was formerly a screenwriter for the likes of Johnnie To, and carried that skill over to this with a kinetic item where the heist sequences were essentially action scenes and by far the highlight of the movie. Helping their good impression was that they had obviously been very well thought out and choreographed to resemble a Hong Kong thriller from that territory's golden age of action flicks, only with a few added bells and whistles to update their techniques to the twenty-first century.
Of course, some other things had changed since then, not least the Chinese Government tightening its grip on the nation's media and transforming it into a propaganda wing, but that made it all the more remarkable what Lau did get away with. There was a sense of him smuggling some fairly subversive material into his film under the noses of the authorities purely because he added a disclaimer at the end, after all the mayhem, stating that the Government had cracked down on crime to the extent that China was now the safest country in the world (!). Tell that to the citizens of Hong Kong, you may mention, for this was in effect a co-production between there and China, so you could imply there was a strong degree of Lau and his team composing a veiled indictment of the nation and all its problems with justice and freedom.
Naturally, you could also watch Caught in Time and see nothing but a slick cat and mouse thriller, as Wang and Wu made for an entertaining pair of rivals and compelled you to keep watching to find out who would eventually gain the upper hand, though even there that would not be much of a surprise as the authorities were not going to let The Falcon get away with his crimes, were they? Yes, the inclusion of a suicidal girl was misguided and added to humanise the villain, in itself a curious choice for someone we watch gunning down people in cold blood, but it did contribute to the overall character of the production and prevent it from travelling the most obvious routes from A to B. Also, the gang are so vicious that the extremely straightlaced Captain Zhong was a striking contrast, despite him making this case personal somewhat unprofessional, though it was in keeping with those fondly recalled Hong Kong favourites of yesteryear. You may dismiss this as more Chinese tubthumping in cinematic form, but there was a cheek here with what they achieved with the apparent blessing of the Government censors that satisfied. Music by Julian Chan and Lam Kwan Fai.
Aka: Chu Bao
[Signature Entertainment presents Caught in Time on Digital Platforms 7th February 2022.]
