Back to the Past movie review: Louis Koo, Raymond Lam lead nostalgic sequel to TVB series

3/5 stars\nA film does not need to be a masterpiece to become a megahit, provided it strikes the perfect chord. Few contemporary Hong Kong releases prove this better than Back to the Past, a subpar historical sci-fi fantasy that is saved – and arguably even transcended – by the potent wave of nostalgia it inspires in its target audience.\nAn effects-driven action adventure that picks up where the 2001 TVB drama series A Step into the Past left off, this long-gestating sequel co-directed by Ng Yuen-fai (Warriors of Future) and Jack Lai Chun-lung (Possession Street) is a must-see for those who regard the early 2000s as the last great era for Hong Kong entertainment.\nTo put its improbability in perspective, the big-budget production was only possible because Louis Koo Tin-lok – the actor and pop singer who played his last TVB role in that beloved original series – has since become not just Hong Kong cinema’s most prolific leading man, but also one of its most influential studio bosses.\n\n\nStill, no amount of star power is enough to salvage Lily He Xin’s slack screenplay, which revolves around an inexplicable premise: that Ken (Michael Miu Kiu-wai in a newly created role), the inventor of the time machine used in the series – itself adapted from Huang Yi’s novel – is seeking revenge after being “wrongly imprisoned” for two decades.\nWhile it is not clear who put him in prison or why, Back to the Past swiftly brushes aside such logic gaps and transports Ken and his team of mercenaries to the last years of the Warring States Period, where Hong Siu-long (Koo), a Hong Kong special agent stranded there after the machine malfunctioned, has helped install an impostor (Raymond Lam Fung) as the Qin Emperor.\nMuch of the film unfolds like a goofy and gratuitous piece of sci-fi pulp – enlivened only by Sammo Hung Kam-bo’s action choreography – as Ken and his heavily armed soldiers deploy their futuristic gadgets, from face-swapping neck braces to shape-shifting hoverboards, to try to take the place of the emperor, while Hong helps the latter out.\n\n\nFar more enthralling is, of course, the love-hate relationship between Hong and the emperor, which began as a mentorship between a knowledgeable martial artist and a clueless young disciple in the 2001 drama and eventually developed into a complex dynamic involving a strategist who knows too much and a tyrant who craves total control.\nIt helps that both Koo and Lam have matured into significantly better actors in the intervening years. Reuniting many of the original cast members after so long, in a story that boils down to pondering an irretrievable past, Back to the Past may yet prove a surprisingly emotional watch for its hometown crowd for reasons quite apart from its cinematic deficiencies.\nWant more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook\n