Starring: Eddie Peng, Wang Yanlin, Xin Zhilei, Lyric Lan, Yuan Fufu, Wang Yutian, Xu Yang Director: Dante Lam

“THE Rescue” was originally scheduled to be released in January this year, but the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak scuttled those plans. Now it’s finally hitting screens after a delay of one year.

Gao Qian (Eddie Peng) is the main winchman of China Rescue and Salvage — an elite team of rescue workers not unlike the U.S. Coast Guard. This means he’s the go-to guy that dangles dangerously from a helicopter and is sent into the heart of all manner of disasters in order to save any survivors. After one harrowing rescue that strikes fear into the heart of his fellow rescue workers, half of his team quits, which only reinforces Gao’s resolve to save as many people as he can.

Enter female pilot Fan Yuling (Xin Zhilei), whose no-nonsense attitude and professional demeanor quickly catch the attention of Gao. The tension between them doesn’t go unnoticed as Gao’s son, Cong Cong (Zhang Jingyi) tries to get them together.

The story may be a simple one, but the movie is director Dante Lam’s third outing paying tribute to the men and women of China’s rescue forces. But while “Operation Mekong” and “Operation Red Sea” were about the armed forces, China Rescue and Salvage consists mostly of civilians working in what must be one of the toughest and most challenging jobs in the world.

Lam’s previous movies about China’s armed personnel were bona fide hits, and two of the top grossing movies to come out of the country in recent years. This track record meant that “The Rescue” had a budget in excess of a whopping US$90 million, and was able to shoot on location in Xiamen and Mexico.

The mark of any good disaster thriller lies in the complexity and the scenarios and the pacing, and in these tests, “The Rescue” passes with flying colors. The complicated factors that make up each scenario multiply with every succeeding disaster or industrial accident, resulting in daring, nail-biting rescues that see the squad push themselves further and further in the hopes of finding survivors. It’s more than enough to keep even the most jaded movie-goer on the edge of their seat, including this reviewer. True, the CGI is a little patchy at parts, but on the whole, Lam has proven with his trilogy of movies that Chinese productions are more than capable of keeping pace with their Hollywood counterparts.

The problem is when a disaster thriller like this tries to inject the ever-important human factor into this. Gao and his colleagues are little more than wells of tiring inspirational cliches and tropes, and the plot segues awkwardly into melodrama when it becomes clear that all is not well with Cong Cong.

Peng is one of the strongest leading men in the Chinese-speaking market now, but he’s given little to do other than one of three things: look determined, concerned, or valiantly trying to cover up any despair his character feels. This is more the fault of the script than with Peng himself. Xin is also very one-note as Fan, and comes across as a bit of a boring blank canvas.

The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen. (SD-Agencies)