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‘Why are Elder Lee and Captain Chen in this?’ I demanded of V a few minutes into the new feature film installment of Taiwanese television series Black & White (Pizi Ying Xiong). ‘They’re meant to be dead!’

‘That’s because it’s a pre-quel,’ explained V patiently.

Originally, when director Tsai Yueh-Hsun began planning a feature film as a sequel to his high rating 2009 police action series, he was successful in signing both leads, Vic ‘Zai Zai’ Zhou Yu Min (周渝民) and Mark Zhao You Ting (趙又廷 ) to reprise their roles as Pizi and Ying Xiong, respectively. Soon, however, Zai Zai dropped out of the project and apparently thereafter withstood several entreaties for him to return. Tsai and his co-writer may have seized upon the idea of a prequel as a clever solution to this dilemma, while leaving the proverbial door open for further collaboration between Mark and Zai Zai in a future sequel as originally intended.

The pre-quel concept brings along its own irritations, however. Some viewers may find themselves distracted by already knowing the fate of some of these characters in the television series, especially when these outcomes involve injury, death or betrayal. And they may also notice that many actors in the original cast look quite a bit older, even though the time frame of the film is meant to be earlier than that of the television series.

Mark Zhao (Chao) You Ting in a trailer for Dawn of Assault shown on SETTV.

Mark Zhao, now 26, definitely looks more mature than he did in the series, but this suits him. A short haircut casts his chiselled features into relief, making him look more like an action hero than the sweet faced Canadian university student he was only a few years ago. Mark is more than idol material: he can really act, and even in a story told at a breakneck pace with only a few pauses for character development, he manages to put some clothes on the bare bones of the reckless yet honourable Wu Ying Xiong. (Watch out for the scene in which Ying Xiong has to attend an anger management session with a smarmy psychologist: it is a gem).

Fiercely loyal to Zai Zai and his role of Chen Zai Tian, I admit I turned up to see the film fully prepared to dislike Chinese actor Huang Bo (黄渤) as San Lian Hui member Xu Da Fu. (When Ying Xiong attempts to arrest him and they become unwilling sidekicks). Huang is somewhat periodontally challenged, but his face is very mobile and after a time, I found him funny and likable. The chemistry between the leads is never very dynamic, however. Huang’s characterisation is sympathetic but it seems contained within its own silo without much reference to what Mark Zhao is doing on screen. Some viewers may also find Huang’s pronounced mainland accent disconcerting. Da Fu is meant to be a local gangster from Harbor City, not an international one.

Huang Bo (黄渤) stars as Xu Da Fu in Black & White: Dawn of Assault

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And what is it about Black & White, both the series and this new film, that they can’t seem to develop a decent female lead? (A forensic officer in the series played by Janine Zhang (張鈞甯) was promising, but they did not give her enough to do and disappointingly, she has only a voice cameo in the film). I fear I am not alone in being pleased to hear that the few scenes in the film involving boring, cutesy-pie Ivy Chen were edited out. Hong Kong model Angelababy (Angela Yeung Wing), a skinny, bland beauty with a bee-stung lower lip, is hardly an improvement. Her scenes, like Ivy’s, could equally well have fallen under the editorial delete button and it would have made very little difference to the trajectory of the plot or to the emotional engagement of the audience. Terri Kwan, who memorably played the obsessive Katrina in Heaven’s Wedding Gown, on the other hand, is regal and controlled in a small but significant role.

Although the film clearly belongs to the action genre, Tsai and his team do give a few nods in the direction of deeper meaning. The plot from time to time shows us an increasingly borderless world, in which even federal agencies nominally in charge of national security and defense become increasingly implicated in transactional criminal deals involving arms, drugs, cash and terror. In an understated role, Leon Dai (戴立忍), a regular in Tsai projects, is perhaps the most successful in bringing some of these ideas to life.

In the end, however, none of the nuances of characterisation or of thematic development matter very much at all. Crime writer Raymond Chandler once said that whenever he felt a plot was sagging, he would bring in man with a gun. Tsai and his writers do the same, but on a grander scale: they tend to bring in a paramilitary hit squad. At one point, V and I counted at least six gun toting forces in action. They all have a tendency to spray around what must be the most wildly inaccurate automatic weapons fire in the history of urban assault. Occasionally, however, the violence departs from the cartoonesque world of spectacular firefights, crashes and explosions, where the protagonists always emerge unhurt, and it becomes more personal, sadistic and deadly. In Taiwan the film is rated PG, but in Australia it certainly would have scored an MA.

Although always in the thick of the action, Ying Xiong remains virtually unscathed until the final scenes involving an aircraft where he finally picks up a few nicks and scratches. He and Da Fu exhange the usual consolatory buddy flick banter, but I remember wishing Chen Zai Tian would suddenly appear to give him a hug. I liked the television series enough to have sought out the pre-quel, and it certainly was not without its merits, but I’m holding out for a proper new installment in which Pizi and Ying Xiong of the Chinese title will be reunited. And while Tsai and his production team are at it, why not make Janine Zhang the female lead?

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