Movie review: Come Back Home (PG13)
The story: Donnie Yen plays a Shenzhen engineer whose son is missing in the snowy mountains. Can he channel his inner Ip Man and save the day?
Yen’s grounded performance in this disaster drama is well-supported by Cecilia Han as the stoic mother in the ill-fated winter family vacation. The father and his rebellious eight-year-old (Jinhui Yuan) spat while driving up the Changbai Mountains in north-east China. Next thing they know, the boy is gone.
The local authorities mobilise a massive search-and-rescue operation, and warn that no one has survived the extreme conditions.
Come Back Home was filmed on location in these very sub-zero temperatures to spectacular effect.
A treacherous frozen river and an avalanche bring sustained thrills, but Hong Kong director Lo Chi Leung is more interesting than just an action film-maker: Has there ever been a crime drama like his Double Tap (2000) or The Bullet Vanishes (2012)? The vast set pieces here are backdrops to an intimate profile of a desperate father’s guilt and heedless heroism, risking all to find his child.
He butts heads with the rescue team (mainly, the constable played by Jia Bing), and fights off a kidnapping gang.
The hours tick by, and before long, he and his wife are trading angry recriminations as flashbacks to their once-happy home show how he had over the years become an absentee dad worn down by work and mortgage.
Yen commits passionately to this flawed family man on a redemptive arc that the movie, to its credit, follows though to an uncompromising end.
Hot take: Every parent’s worst nightmare, convincingly dramatised.
Verdict: 3 stars
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now