Back to the last review – Everyone is still fighting in the time travel sequel | film

TOnline travel stories were briefly in the crosshairs of Chinese censorship in early 2010, due to the potential for subversion of “official” history. It is not clear whether the 2001 Hong Kong hit TV series “Step into the Past” – about a modern-day policeman transported to the Warring States period in the third century BC – was seen as a criminal. But apparently all of this now applies to Chinese time travel movies, hence this glossy cinematic version of Step into the Past that picks up the main characters 20 years later.

Louis Koo returns as former policeman Hong Siu Lung, who remains trapped in the Chen family and lies with his family after putting his protégé Chew Poon (Raymond Lam) on the throne. Back in the present, time machine inventor Ken (Michael Mio Qi) has just been released from prison on charges of corrupting the technology and dismembering Hong. He maintains that this is unfair, but he does not manipulate the grievance procedures; He goes full Vader and decides to come back and become Emperor of Qin himself.

The film moves along at a brisk pace, with some funny bits, but directors Jack Lai and Yuen Fei Ng don’t take it in the expected direction, which would be an anachronistic comedy of manners in the vein of Les Visiteurs or Back to the Future. Qin blows everyone’s minds, and Qin’s foot soldiers, with 21st century ordnance, are as accurate as they get in what amounts to an extended chase sequence after the Emperor. There are some passable scenes, such as escaping in a carriage down a hillside tea plantation. But the fight choreography is perfunctory—surprisingly, as it’s overseen by longtime master Sammo Hung—and often cut into restrained close-ups.

Worse still, the story’s soapy synths take on an increasingly sentimental tone, as Kane’s betrayed daughter (Baihe Bai) becomes a mouthpiece for lectures on paranoia and history. Lam’s cold-eyed tyrant is often asked to faithfully return to Hong’s foggy Pavilion persona, especially when a callback montage to the original show looms. A Step into the Past Purists may appreciate this trip down the rabbit hole, but nostalgia is a pretty basic technology for most people these days.