It says something about the ambitions behind China/Hong Kong’s most recent developments as a commercial movie power that this star-studded actioner is being promoted as the territory’s first “radiation disaster blockbuster,” as if it were a kind of requisite milestone on the road to becoming Hollywood’s equal in terms of box office stature; and who am I to say it isn’t, even if the box office in question is domestic only? The money is all there up on the screen, mainly in the form of special effects that were already considered passé in the U.S. after Independence Day. What’s more interesting is how the disaster itself is treated. Beijing would probably balk at the idea of depicting a nuclear radiation incident in Hong Kong because of what it might suggest about the responsibility of the Communist government, but by setting the action between 1996, the year before the British handed over the city to China, and 2007 the movie lets the current authorities off the hook. Consequently, the filmmakers can go hog wild throwing blame for the mess at any number of evil or corrupted actors who have nothing to do with the Party. 

The movie opens at the fictional Asian Financial Forum, where the finance minister, Simon Fan (Andy Lau), celebrates the passage of a new law that will ease inspections of cargo coming into the port of Hong Kong so as to boost its appeal to international shippers. On hand are a pack of well-groomed foreigners representing multinationals who obviously have nefarious intentions for this new access, and the bad results are almost immediate. A fire breaks out in the cargo yard where illegal materials have somehow made it into the territory thanks to laxer inspection protocols, and several firefighters die in the conflagration, including Fan’s wife, whose brother, fellow firefighter Kit (Bai Yu), never forgives his brother-in-law for her death. Fan, accepting his responsibility, quits politics and throws himself into the study of environmental science, in particular the effects of nuclear radiation, because he knows that those nefarious actors are using Hong Kong port to smuggle more illegal waste from the so-called Developed World to the so-called Undeveloped World, which recycles such waste at a much cheaper rate. Ten years later, the expected disaster takes place, when a storage container holding medical equipment is threatened by another fire in a recycling yard and Fan is called upon by the government for advice on what to do. Once he finds out the problem—the medical equipment contains Cesium-137, one of the most toxic substances on the planet—he calls on the government to evacuate almost the entire city, lest everybody be wiped out. Meanwhile, Kit is on site with his faithful crew fighting the fire up close.

A lot happens in Cesium Fallout, and at a breakneck pace. Sticking to true disaster movie formulas, the writers keep following up one terrible situation with an even worse one, until it gets to the point where the viewer can’t see any possible outcome except mass death and destruction. There are various subplots in addition to the bad blood between Fan and Kit, including two romantic intrigues among the firefighters, the acting chief executive’s (Karen Mok) husband’s under-the-table connections to the multinational that is doing the smuggling, and Fan’s troubled relationship with his own teenage daughter. There are also undocumented foreign worker victims, self-sacrificing first responders, and duplicitous bureaucrats whose own hastily sketched stories are rendered in the starkest terms, so as a disaster blockbuster Cesium Fallout provides a sufficient measure of thrills and spills while highlighting a problem that is still a huge threat to anyone who lives near such ports and recycling yards. The production is too simplistic to make much of an impression as a cautionary tale, but it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to see that this kind of catastrophe is well within the range of possibility.

In Cantonese and English. Now playing in Tokyo at Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831).

Cesium Fallout home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 Edko Films Limited and Beijing Alibaba PIctures Culture Co., Ltd.