Motorway (2012): Action cinema stripped back to its bare essentials
Motorway only does one thing, but it does it extremely fucking well.
It’s clear that Soi Cheang’s primary motive behind making Motorway was to shoot car chases. He has found a basic story which enables him to do that: a hackneyed cat-and-mouse tale about a legendary getaway driver (Guo Xiaodong) pursued by a retiring traffic cop (Anthony Wong) and his petrolhead rookie (Shawn Yue). But Soi doesn’t really care about the plot; he sees it only as a way to move the film from one car chase to the next as quickly as possible. And it is hard to care when the chases are as good as they are in Motorway.
The chase scenes soar because of Motorway’s attention to detail. Like Soi’s debut film Accident, also produced by Johnnie To and released under the Milkyway banner, this is a film which recognises how much specifics can immerse you into the action. Soi cares about the shifting of gears, the brake speed of each vehicle, the weight of the collisions; little things that other filmmakers might overlook. But in doing so you can almost smell the burning rubber through the screen in Motorway; the movie puts you right behind the driver’s wheel.
This sense of immersion is heightened by the fact that Motorway was shot on location in the nocturnal maze of Hong Kong’s busy highways and winding streets. Equally, it is elevated by sublime visual storytelling from Soi Cheang throughout. The variety of shot choices gives the film a playful style, but never at the expense of clear geography, which means you always know what is going on, even when Motorway is at its most chaotic. You can tell he was Johnnie To’s protégé, who was arguably the master of this.
Motorway is action cinema at its most minimalist. Soi Cheang has stripped the genre back to its bare essentials. It makes for a lean 90-minute thrill-ride in which the fast-paced car chases are the centrepiece of the movie. And when they are accomplished with as much urgency and vibrancy as they are in Motorway, this is not a bad thing at all. It’s a brilliant feat of action filmmaking boasting remarkable cinematography, editing, directing and stunt-work. Yes, it only does one thing. But it does that one thing extremely fucking well.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Directed by Soi Cheang. Written by Joey O'Bryan, Szeto Kam-Yuen and Francis Fung. Produced by Johnnie To. Starring Shawn Yue, Anthony Wong and Guo Xiaodong. A Sil-Metropole Organisation and Milkyway Image Production. Distributed by Media Asia. 90 minutes. Hong Kong.