The Viral Factor review

Momentous achievement for HK cinema.

By turns brilliant, perfect and careless, The Viral Factor is a massive US$25 million HK action vehicle that luxuriously illustrates its ambitions with a lavish dose of bravura stunts and a near limitless fusillade of shots and explosions matched only by the finest of Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a momentous achievement for both veteran director Dante Lam and the HK movie industry. Unfortunately, this success is marred by a plot that feels terribly unfocused and patently dispensable. The inevitable result is a movie that feels more like a random and silly collection of well executed action set pieces. If that’s good enough for you, The Viral Factor will be the best action film you’ll ever watch this year.

International Defence Commission (IDC) agent Jon (Jay Chou) escapes from a failed mission with a bullet lodged in his brain after leader Sean (Andy On) betrays and ambushes the team. With only 2 weeks left to live, Jon decides to spend his final days with his mother (Elaine Jin) who quickly reveals to him that he has a long lost brother, Man Yueng (Nicholas Tse) whom she left behind with his father (Liu Kai Chi) several years ago. Jon decides to track his brother down in Malaysia but soon discovers that Man Yueng is a wanted criminal and an important chess piece in Sean’s plans to sell a lethal mutated virus to a rich bidder. Initially on opposite sides of the law, Jon must join hands with his brother to defeat a common enemy after Sean kidnaps Man Yueng’s daughter. Factored into the equation is medical specialist Rachel (Lin Peng), a perfunctory damsel in distress whom Jon must also save before she is forced to help Sean formulate the virus into a potent bio chemical weapon.




A decent summation of the movie is quickly introduced as the camera saunters around the skyline of Jordan. Clad in a dusted military outfit and sophisticated equipment, Jay Chou’s character cuts a flinty expression, serious and ready for business. This sets the tone for the entire set piece which takes place in and around the unpaved streets of Jordan. His convoy of 5 cars is suddenly attacked by a posse of terrorists and a rocket swoops to the armoured military vehicle at the front, effortlessly blasting it off a cliff and tearing it into pieces while a rigged bomb blows and engulfs the rear vehicle in flames. Outnumbered and overwhelmed by sheer firepower, his team embarks on foot and is rewarded with tense encounters in corridors and a carpark. By the time the enemies leave with their loot on a chopper, you start to wonder how much money was actually blown on featuring the tanks for a few seconds and sending a pair armoured military vehicles into shatters.

The scope of the movie becomes clearer when you realise that it’s essentially segueing from one intensive action set piece to the next without so much of a pause. Dante Lam is almost ruthless in his direction, moving the movie at an incredibly breakneck pace which I suspect may leave some viewers feeling obnoxiously nauseous, albeit consummately impressed. Much like in a Jackie Chan flick, the elaborate stunt design has a propensity of using environmental objects in resourceful ways, making each set piece a joy to watch as it unfolds in its own unique and intelligent way. A routine car chase and many well staged gun fights aside, The Viral Factor also boasts a tricky helicopter chase around the iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur. Showy and bold, the scene will have you clutching your seat as you find your adrenaline and emotions stretched.



Unremarkably, the movie suffers when it attempts to tie its crowd of action set pieces into the warp and weft of its plot. It simply doesn’t work. You can catch around 3 minutes of human drama between each set piece but for most parts, the simulacra of such little story threads dissolve into the deep ends of your mind when the action restarts. A plethora of characters may entice in a drama but the set-up merely manages to trouble the plot here as it veers discursively between saving the world from a villain bent on destroying the world by unleashing a deadly mutated virus on humankind, saving a kidnapped daughter to saving a damsel in distress. The title would have you believe the movie centres around the virus threat but the movie inexplicably forgets this after an hour and starts to emphasize on the urgency of saving a kidnapped child. The damsel in question here, a trapped scientist, is entirely superfluous, serving only to further cloud the murky plot.

The Viral Factor makes little sense but such an infraction could be readily excused in the face of the very competent action set pieces that only big budget Hollywood productions can boast. What makes the movie even more impressive is the fact that it’s able to accomplish this at only a fraction of the cost. If you are fine with watching a movie where every second feels like a climax and are willing to discard the story in favour of more no-nonsense action scenes, The Viral Factor will be your best bet this year. If you prefer a movie which gives equal respect to all aspects of a script, look elsewhere.



This review can also be viewed @ http://www.in2it.sg/article/theviralfactor.