Review | Crisis Negotiators movie review: Lau Ching-wan, Francis Ng in so-so The Negotiator remake

Set in the 90s – as if bad cops only existed in the colonial era – Lau Ching-wan plays a police hostage negotiator and Francis Ng an ex-cop

Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Edmund Lee

Published: 5:15pm, 12 Jun 2024

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2.5/5 stars

The one piece of advice I would give anyone wanting to watch this Hong Kong remake of the 1998 Hollywood movie The Negotiator (which is currently on Disney+) is not to watch the original first: other than some added car chases, almost every aspect of this new film pales in comparison.

On its own, Crisis Negotiators is a perfectly serviceable crime thriller, but admirers of F. Gary Gray’s Chicago-set police procedural will notice the inferior acting right away. While the remake features many of the same plot twists and dialogue, it still manages to feel unconvincing.

Rather than updating it for a present-day audience, writer-director Herman Yau Lai-to (The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell) sets his remake in the 1990s. While that decision is bewildering, it does keep the film in line with the increasingly dominant notion in Hong Kong films that bad cops only existed in the colonial era.

Playing the lead role of a seasoned hostage negotiator is Lau Ching-wan, who, despite being one of Hong Kong cinema’s finest actors, struggles to match the wisecracking charm of his US counterpart, Samuel L. Jackson.

After he finds his long-time work partner dead in a car, respected police inspector Cheuk Man-wai (Lau) becomes the prime suspect in his death amid a concerted effort by his corrupt colleagues to set him up as the fall guy and to cover up a major embezzlement plot within the force.

In a last-ditch effort to prove his innocence, Cheuk storms the police’s internal investigation office, takes several hostages at gunpoint and demands to speak to Tse Ka-chun (Francis Ng Chun-yu), a former police negotiator who now works as a social worker.

Francis Ng as social worker and former police negotiator Tse Ka-chun in a still from Crisis Negotiators.

What unfolds from here is exactly as you remember it from the original, as Yau sticks closely to the narrative beats and his ensemble cast go through the motions like this is a full-scale play-acting exercise.

Yau has made only a few changes in his version, but one of them is a mistake – the second lead has been turned from a cryptic and cynical rival negotiator (as portrayed by Kevin Spacey) into a paper-thin, consummate good guy played by Ng, who looks uninterested throughout. Why is he even allowed to take charge of a police mission?

Fans of executive producer Andy Lau Tak-wah will rejoice in his turn as the star hostage-taker in a newly written, culturally specific opening scene, but Yau swiftly moves on to the kind of generic thrills that he can churn out in his sleep.

Lau Ching-wan as police inspector Cheuk Man-wai in a still from Crisis Negotiators.

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