4 Star

Panic on the Streets of China.

Writer/director Ho-Leung Lau (Two Thumbs Up, Three) brings us his second outing as director with this stunning story based on real life events, that occurred in Southern China in the 1990s. A time when violence ran amok in the streets, markets and banks, with a violent gang robbing and killing with impunity. It is down to one dedicated man and team to bring them to justice, this is their story.

Our story starts with violence as a man is kidnapped and thrown into the back of a van. The van has six masked men in it, the leader has an M.O. in that he says that if you tell him a joke, and he likes it, he will let you go. But this hostage isn’t the cowering type and when he hears the police pursuit he bites down hard on the robber’s ear, severing the lobe, be fore he is pushed out the back of the van, to aid their escape.

I’ll bite down on you, and never let go.

The man is arrested, until they realize that the man from the back of the van is their new Captain Zhong Cheng (Qianyuan Wang, My People, My Country, Saving Mr. Wu) a man that is famed for spending seven days in a sewer to make sure he got his man.

It turns out that when Zhong was picked up from the train station, he noticed that the shutters of the friendship market were closed during the busiest time of the day, he investigates and spots the robbers inside, but as he tries to phone for assistance he was captured. Now in the years ahead he has one goal to capture Eagle (Daniel Wu, New Police Story, Tomb Raider) and his gang.

As the clever and deadly raids occur in different cities, the robbers always seem to be two steps ahead of Zhong’s team. Zhong works out that the gang is using vantage points in each city they raid, and Zhong uses this information to catch the raiders red-handed, which leads to a big shoot-out, where Zhong shoots the lookout. Eagle informs the rest of the gang that they do not leave casualties. So they head back into the affray. During this shoot-out, police woman Chen Qian (Michelle Wai, The Sleep Curse, Heaven in the Dark) risks her life to save a young girl locked in a car, in the thick of the gunfire. This gets her a dressing down by Zhong, but it also makes her one of his team.

As the gang make lots of money for less than ten minutes work, the cops get closer to catching him as he has a loose end, his wife (Jessie Li, The Eleventh Chapter, Our Time Will Come), but she is a woman that is not afraid of death.

Caught in Time is a gripping cat and mouse story that left a lot of people dead, and a lot of people injured. Caught in Time is the story of two very similar men, only separated by the thin line of right and wrong. Excellent.

Events that changed China forever.

Safeguard the people against crime and violence.

Caught in Time is available on Digital Platforms.