The Bravest [Lie huo ying xiong] *** (2019, Xiaoming Huang, Jiang Du, Zhuo Tan) – Movie Review

Director Tony Chan’s nail-biting survival action drama The Bravest [Lie huo ying xiong] (2019) is viscerally intense and successful both as a disaster movie and a tribute to China’s fire-fighters. It is staged on an awesomely mammoth scale, with spectacular fire effects.

The CGI is brilliantly employed to make it thrilling and realistic, even if it goes slightly over the top, along with the odd few bits of the story and, especially, the music score. There’s so much exciting going on, you don’t really need a score at all, let alone this bombastic one.

As usual with disaster movies, the personal story is less well done, even a bit lame and weak, and certainly manipulative and sentimental, but it is adequate enough. While this major disaster scenario is going on, a mother is searching for her missing kid in a panic-ridden city. Intercutting this thin idea with the main drama is a thin, soapy idea. But the performances are strong, the actors appealing, the direction capable, and the main story incredibly powerful, as the firemen battle a huge fire after an oil pipeline explodes.

It has a UK 12 certificate, but it contains very intense disaster sequences and related injury images, and lots of grisly deaths, so it is quite a harrowing experience, despite its upbeat, positive nature, accenting the good side when mankind is up against it. Surprisingly, there is hardly a villain in sight, and dozens of heroes. Even the main villain there is, withholding vital info from the firemen, is painted in a forgiving light. Alas, this tends towards a propaganda feel, but no one is going to complain about a tribute to fire-fighters, who are indeed The Bravest.

It stars Xiaoming Huang as troubled captain Liwei, Jiang Du, and Zhuo Tan. The writers are Chao Wang and Tony Chan, adapted from Mongolian author Bao’erji Yuanye’s book Tears Are the Deepest Water and inspired by a real life fire that broke out in Dalian, Liaoning Province in July 2010. Surprisingly, while no one was killed in the real-life inciden, many die in the movie version.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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