While the police commissioner is away in Copenhagen, a police van on patrol goes missing along with its five officers and hi-tech surveillance gear. Soon the hostage demands are arriving and the police department goes into lockdown under two deputy commissioners who can't stand each other. One is M.B. Lee (Tony Leung Ka-fai) a battle-hardened vet who isn't above a little waterboarding to protect Hong Kong. Opposing him is Sean Lau (superstar Aaron Kwok in a startling performance), a steely technocrat who never walked a beat, and a stickler for respecting the rights of citizens.

When it's revealed that M.B. Lee's son is one of the abducted patrolmen, things start to heat up and Lee starts sending cops into harm's way, while Lau tries to figure out how to stop him using bureaucratic judo. Office politics become blood sport where a well-timed phone call is worse than a dagger in the back. Winner of nine Hong Kong Film Awards, Cold War is a cracking thriller about Hong Kong's relationship with China where the police force tears itself apart, the gunsmoke slowly settles, and "the biggest enemy is always on the inside."