With a multiple award-winning actor (Tony Leung Ka-fai, above right facing Aaron Kwok Fu-shing) and a "Heavenly King"(Kwok) as its two leading men, Cold War has a star-studded cast that can get fans all agog and excited.
But it's potentially disconcerting to see two first-time directors (Longman Leung Lok-man and Sunny Luk Kim-ching, who also wrote the script) at the helm of such a major blockbuster, whose local release was preceded by months of advertising and screenings at the Busan International Film Festival and the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival.
Put it this way, one would normally expect neophyte directors to opt for more modest and low-key debut film projects than this action-packed crime drama that has a pair of rival police deputy commissioners (with divergent policing philosophies and personalities) as its two main characters.
With the police commissioner temporarily away from Hong Kong, Waise M.B. Lee (Tony Leung) is the man in charge when a series of criminal acts lead to the hijacking of an Emergency Unit van with five officers onboard late one night. A hardliner by inclination, Lee - whose deputy (Gordon Lam Ka-tung) is open to water-boarding suspects - decides to deploy two thirds of the police force to rescue the officers.