Tactical Unit: The Code
(aka Tactical Unit - The Code, PTU: The Code)
2008; directed by Law Wing-Cheong

The first of five made-for-TV movies based on PTU, Tactical Unit: The Code reunites most of the cast and crew from the original film, but is sadly missing the touch of Johnnie To. This picture is serviceable enough, but without To's trademark style, it comes off as feeling a bit average, especially in the crowded world of Hong Kong cops-and-robbers movies.

Like the first movie, Tactical Unit: The Code centers on a cop named Bill (Simon Yam), a hard-nosed man who regularly crosses between both sides of the thin blue line to get justice. His rough methods to deter a criminal named Shing (Cheung Wing-Cheung) are caught on a surveillance camera, so CAPO (the anti-corruption unit) begins an investigation. While trying to find Shing so that Bill can "convince" him not to testify, things become more complicated as one of Bill's men, Eight (Wong Sze-Yan) starts losing it after finding out he is being busted down to a desk job.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Tactical Unit: The Code, but then again, there's nothing really outstanding about it, either. Unlike a lot of Johnnie To's films, which add a lot of quirky characters, outstanding style, and great uses of dark humor to turn your average cop thriller into the cinematic equivalent of filet mignon, Law Wing-Cheong's process comes up with something more like a McDonald's hamburger. It's cheap and gets the job done, but it's nothing really all that exciting, and probably nothing you're really not going to have any sort of deep discussions about afterwards.

Overall, though, Tactical Unit: The Code is competent enough that it should still satisfy fans of the genre, and this reviewer is interested in seeing the other films in the series. But one would hope things improve a bit as time goes on and we get to learn about the characters more. Perhaps that's what the film-makers had set out to do here. Not create the ultimate cop drama per se, but make a solid foundation for a series of films. If that was indeed their intention, then they have succeeded, at least to an extent. The next entries are going to have to be more exciting, though, if they expect viewers to stick with it.

RATING: 6