2/5 stars
Just when you thought you’d seen the last of the most hopelessly inept crime thriller series in Hong Kong cinema in the past 10 years, along comes Crypto Storm.
Purportedly the first feature in a new spin-off series, Crypto Storm is co-produced by Lam and Edmond Wong Chi-mun, who co-scripted the story with Wong Ho-wah.
At the centre of this latest Storm is a financially struggling Hong Kong bank headed by president Sung Tse-man (Justin Cheung Kin-sing), who is steadfast in persuading the board of directors to greenlight his proposal to acquire a cryptocurrency exchange platform in the hope it will make a big profit and save the family business.
Tse-man faces stern opposition from his petulant half-brother Tse-hin (Edward Ma Chi-wai) and domineering stepmother (Carrie Ng Ka-lai), who are intent on selling the bank instead.
It doesn’t help anyone’s case that a senior manager of the company has just been the subject of an assassination attempt.
On their case is ICAC chief investigation officer Lok Yat-fung (Ron Ng Cheuk-hei), whose plans to prove the bank’s involvement in market manipulation and money laundering include planting a mole (Adam Pak Tin-nam) inside and recruiting the hacker (Chloe So Ho-yee) who wrote the software for the aforementioned crypto platform to hack into the bank’s records.
With its crisp storytelling and relatively young and good-looking cast, Crypto Storm can be a fairly easy watch if one is willing to overlook its repeated and flagrant disregard of common sense and law enforcement protocols.
The overlap in functions of the police and the ICAC made for an unintended running joke in the original series but is here reduced to an afterthought. Lok has been told by his boss to work closely with the police in an early scene and then, curiously, the latter simply drop out of the proceedings altogether.