3/5 stars

In 2013’s Firestorm, Andy Lau Tak-wah plays a supercop who takes on a ridiculously heavy-armed criminal syndicate, while the business district in Central goes up in smoke. All five fans of that bloated spectacle can breathe a sigh of relief now that Lau is back to tackle a similarly ludicrous crisis in Shock Wave, which sees another of Hong Kong’s busiest locales – the Cross-Harbour Tunnel – under threat.

Lau plays our fearless hero JS, the number-one bomb-disposal expert in the police’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Bureau. In a prologue that could only be considered lazy plotting, JS is also shown to be previously a trusted long-term mole in a gang of bank robbers headed by Peng Hong (Jiang Wu) – that is, until JS managed to put several of them, though regrettably not including Peng, in prison.

Directed by Herman Yau Lai-to from a script by Yau and regular collaborator Erica Li Man ( Nessun Dorma, The Mobfathers), the action thriller offers an absorbing look at bomb disposal early as JS, working with Ron Ng Cheuk-hei’s understudy, deals with a few cagey situations. Logic then goes out the window when Peng returns to hold hundreds of people hostage inside the main tunnel, threatening to blow it all up.