The White Storm 3: Heaven Or Hell (NC16)

Starring Aaron Kwok, Louis Koo, Lau Ching Wan

Directed by Herman Yau

This series about drug trafficking, undercover narcs and crime bosses is thematic only. Recurring Hong Kong big names take turns to play good or bad guys as though it's musical chairs.

Do these dudes ever get confused?

This time, the action-drama, helmed by returning writer-director Herman Yau (Shock Wave), turns eventually into a crazy, all-out Vietnam War-style movie. Bullets and explosions pour holy hell as soldiers and warplanes storm a drug-producing village in the Golden Triangle at the Thai-Myanmar border. FYI, 2013’s original flick went to Thailand too.

Kinda like we’re watching something Rambo wiped out in First Blood Part II in 1985.

Since a leafy jungle is no match for an urban jungle when it’s a HK crime flick.

Series regular Louis Koo, previously a drug dealer in The White Storm 2: Drug Lords, is back as a cop.

He’s Au Zhiyuan, a superintendent in the Narcotics Bureau who’s desperate to get his best friend, Xing (series newcomer Aaron Kwok), out of the deep cover he’s embedded in as Billy, the right-hand man of Thai-Chinese cartel boss Suchat (Lau Ching Wan). After a shootout at a dock, the baddies escape with an injured Xing to Thailand to lie low.

Au, teamed up with Interpol, pursues them to their hideout which allows the film to set up showdowns with the three amigos framed as a twisted Gang Of Brothers with the villainous Suchat not realising that his good pal, Xing, is really an undercover officer.

The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell: Aaron Kwok just figured out where he left his wallet.

Thanks to deft acting, especially by a goateed Lau playing the cocky, nihilistic alpha, it’s a kicking threesome when they converge. Flashbacks showing how they initially met are HK-thriller solid.

“We’re the rising stars of the Golden Triangle,” Suchat proclaims as he aligns violently with the local Khun Sa-inspired warlord (Gallen Lo) who looks like a Chairman Mao-wannabe spouting crooked wisdom about selling drugs to help the farmers. You gotta hand it to this pic for staging mountain-pass ambushes with enthusiasm.

Much of the tension is drawn from Xing’s tenuous situation as he risks his cover being blown and his allegiance being torn in ethical struggles.

Kwok does the heavy lifting quite sufficiently as the trapped moral centre trying to contact Au from the signal-less countryside. While attempting to save a village girl, Noon (Yang Caiyu), he chats with in a yawn fest about escaping to a better place right in front of a giant poppy field.  

There’s a thrill in seeing his handsome brow furrowed in such perpetual conflict.

Make it two handsome brows as the best fun here is seeing both pretty boys — Koo and Kwok —  given equal weightage as cop bros.

They laugh like gleeful kids after beating each other up to fool their mark, Suchat.

You can just about hear their re-united White Storm buddy, Lau, joining in the bonding joke too. (3/5 stars)