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When her son is taken by child traffickers, a former assassin vows revenge in Marc Ma’s action drama, Go For Broke 2 (重生, chóngshēng 2). A thematic sequel to the earlier film, Go For Broke 2 once again deals with a delicate issue in a way that seems both ill-advised and at times unethical as it zooms in on a world of exploitation in which children are merely tools to broker influence between powerful men.
Or at least, as is made clear in its final sequence, the film draws influence from the Epstein scandal as the shady gangster Zuo Man (Sammo Hung Kam-bo) arranges parties on “Carnival Island” where important men can mix with small children. Xi La’s (Isabella Leong Lok-yau) son is abducted while on a school trip with other children from around the world and taken to a boat where he is physically and sexually abused. Xi La manages to track him down when he is the victim of a traffic accident, but is eventually unable to save him. After teaming up with the brother of a girl killed at the same time, Su Cheng (Wen Junhui), she vows revenge and to make everyone who harmed her son suffer.
Ironically, Xi La seems to have been an exploited child herself raised to become an assassin without knowing true family until making a life with Paka. Su Cheng is similarly an orphan who blames himself for his sister’s abduction. Zuo Man, by contrast, is running a family business with both his sons involved in trafficking children, one having begun abusing children himself despite Zuo Man’s disapproval. The action appears to take place in a fictionalised version of America, though aside from all the signs being in English with many of them referencing medical insurance, it doesn’t really look like it architecturally or environmentally.
Nevertheless, turning back to her old gang, Xi La is forced to step into a world of conspiracy as Zuo Man invites what seem to be various prominent American politicians and businessmen to the “island”. The children are dressed in Edwardian-style white outfits and distastefully asked to play in an all while room with clouds floating above that seems to be designed as some kind of heaven. Later, it turns out, that the children are also being experimented on and tortured to produce some kind of serum that can be used for its anti-ageing properties by a rich and powerful class obsessed with youth and immortally. It has to be said that the ethics of placing child actors into some of these scenes, such as one of a young boy undergoing some kind of electroshock treatment, may be ethically questionable, as is the film’s prominent use of AI.
While doing their best to save the other children, Xi La and Su Cheng discover that powerful people seem to be protecting Carnival Island and that alerting the authorities to its presence probably wouldn’t help. When confronted, Zuo Man crassly insists that all the kids were no hopers from the slums who would just have become “lowlifes” anyway, so all he’s doing is “recycling” them so they can be consumed to nourish the elite. As such, the film seems to be kicking back and the ingrained elitism of an apparently shadow world, but doesn’t do too much more with it than using it as evidence of the villains’ evilness while they would even sacrifice their own children to keep their business interests going.
Once again the film is really built around its action sequences but the use of CGI blood spatter again seems a little flippant given the seriousness of the child tracking issue. Similarly, Xi La’s quest to wipe out the gangsters seemingly borrows from exploitation cinema, but the film continues to take itself quite seriously rather than simply allowing Xi La to satisfy her desire to avenge Paka. Anchored by a powerful performance from Isabella Leong Lok-Sze which pretty much carries the film, it addresses themes such as motherhood and family along with the shadowy conspiracy which seems to hang over the “ordinary” world, but can never overcome a sense of tasteless and flippancy in the way that it approaches them, a sentiment borne out by the final AI generated sequence linking the action with real-world events.
Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)
