- Die Hard 2 director presents an old-fashioned action film about a criminal trio in Christmas masks who trigger mayhem in a Hong Kong morgue
- Illogical yet predictable, and with an off-key performance from leading man Nick Cheung, this plays like a Johnnie To film without the irony and deadpan comedy
2.5/5 stars
For his third feature film since uprooting himself from Hollywood to launch a new phase of his career in Beijing, Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) has opted for an old-fashioned action thriller. Light on humour yet heavy on illogical behaviour, Bodies at Rest is a single-location hostage drama.
Scripted by Wu Mengzhang and Chang You from an original story by David Lesser, it is the tale of a few incompetent thugs who try to destroy the incriminating evidence of a recent murder by staging a heist that turns into a bloodbath involving innocent civilians in a public facility.
It's a rainy Christmas Eve and workers at a public morgue in Hong Kong are looking to call it a day. Three armed criminals wearing masks (played by Richie Jen Hsien-chi, Feng Jiayi and Carlos Chan Ka-lok) break in, determined to retrieve a bullet from the body of a woman (Clara Lee) they killed in a gang-related incident.
Instead of complying with the demands of the trio, who have wounded an elderly security guard on their way in, the forensic pathologist on duty, Nick Chan (Nick Cheung Ka-fai), decides to trick them by giving them the wrong bullet. When the gang find this out, they return and threaten to kill anyone in their way, including Nick's intern/romantic interest from Beijing, Lynn Qiao (Yang Zi).
When the thugs put a bullet in the old guard's forehead, a brutal cat-and-mouse game begins inside the morgue. Unfortunately it plays out like something from a Screenwriting 101 class. As Chan and Qiao try to outwit, delay, and escape from the trio, secondary characters flit in and out of the action, creating moments of very predictable tension.
They include Jin Au-yeung, as a janitor oblivious to his surroundings thanks to whatever is blasting through his headphones; Roger Kwok Chun-on as a visiting Health Department official who fails repeatedly to pick up on Chan's signals for help; and Ron Ng Cheuk-hei as one of the policemen who stumble upon the crime scene with no idea what to expect.
Cheung, as Chan, is supposed to have everyman appeal but plays the widower in far too cool-headed fashion, his serene presence at odds with the escalating violence around him.
Bodies at Rest is a satisfactory, if forgettable, rehash of one of those generic gritty Hollywood action films that have gone out of fashion. With a pair of Johnnie To Kei-fung regulars in Cheung and Jen in the leads, and a farcical killing spree at its core, it may even remind a few viewers of the Hong Kong auteur's films " albeit it lacks the deadpan comedy and knowing sense of irony that made To's work special.
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