Motorway has ambitious young cop Chan Cheung (Shawn Yue) and his older more experienced partner Lo Fung (Anthony Wong) spend most of their time chasing car criminals on the streets of Hong Kong. Chan does all of the driving, while Lo does most of the paperwork, but unknown to Chan has had his experience in the past with fast getaway gangsters.
After a speeding motorist Jiang Xin (Guo Xiaodong) is captured and put in prison, he and another prisoner bust out killing cops in the process. Chan gives a high-speed chase but is thwarted by getting stuck in an alleyway where the driving skills of the prisoner helped him escape. This sets the scene for a chase and showdown between the escaped cop killers, the gang there dealing with and the traffic cops who want to bring them to justice.
This film is also produced by Johnnie To’s Milkyway Image company and it shows, with dark moody camera work and great production values. Shawn Yue is ok as the speed-obsessed cop but it’s Anthony Wong who steals the show as a man not long to retirement who has hidden secrets of his own. Altogether a good car chase thriller Motorway reminded me in some ways of last years excellent Drive.
The Blu ray released in Hong Kong by Megastar has a very good 1080P transfer, Clarity is superb even though the film is shot mostly at night. Colours are warm and solid, making this one of the better HK Blu ray releases over the past few months.
The sound has Cantonese: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, Cantonese: Dolby TrueHD 7.1 and Mandarin: Dolby TrueHD 7.1. The Cantonese DTS track is the one I listened to giving solid reproduction with Bass frequencies being very noteworthy. Dialogue is crisp and clear, a very good presentation, although the rears channels were not used as much as I expected for a film of this nature. Subtitles are in English or Chinese and I did not notice any grammatical errors.
Extras, all in HD, include an ok making of, trailer and behind the scenes which includes the shooting of some of the car chase scenes.
A good solid thriller with a great cast. Recommended. (The disc is locked to Region A, so you will need a region A or multi-region player to play back this disc.)
FILM: 7.5 OUT OF 10
VIDEO: 8 OUT OF 10
AUDIO: 8 OUT OF 10
EXTRAS: 5 OUT OF 10
