16th New York Asian Film Festival

Jun 30 - Jul 16, 2017

FilmsGuestsSchedule & Tickets

Photo: Courtesy of China Lion Film Distribution Inc

Extraordinary Mission

非凡任务

The latest breathtaking collaboration between Alan Mak and Felix Chong, the directing/screenwriting team behind Infernal Affairs. Policeman Lin Kai (Huang Xuan, an arthouse favourite here impressing in his first action role) goes deeper and deeper undercover to bring down the Twin Eagles drug cartel. The stakes are raised to a deadly level - including forced drug addiction and time bomb pyrotechnics - when he earns the trust to be brought before the reclusive and psychopathic druglord Eagle (Duan Yihong, whose intensity steals the screen). To survive, he must turn the cartel against itself, winning their trust at every turn. The edge-of-the-seat suspense and electrifying action take the basic paradigm of Johnnie To’s already full throttle Drug War and turbo charges it with a nod to the Mission:Impossible franchise. Extraordinary Mission is the 2017 upgrade to the classic hyperbolic HK movies that changed the world of genre cinema.

Directors: Anthony Pun, Alan Mak
Cast: Zu Feng, Lang Yueting, Duan Yihong, Huang Xuan
Languages: Mandarin with English subtitles
2017; 120 min.; DCP

SCHEDULE:

Saturday July 1, 7:30pm
Film Society of Lincoln Center

With actor Duan Yihong in attendance; Duan will receive the NYAFF 2017 Star Asia Award

Star Asia Award
Duan Yihong
段奕宏

Duan Yihong may be Chinese cinema's best-kept secret. He secured his position as every director's favorite actor two years ago with his gritty portrait of a police captain in Cao Baoping's groundbreaking hard-boiled thriller The Dead End. His performance won him Best Actor at the Shanghai International Film Festival, Beijing Student Film Festival, and China Film Director's Guild Awards, as well as Best Supporting Actor at the Hundred Flowers Awards. He suddenly entered the A-list. Xinjiang-born Duan made his film debut in Wang Xiaoshuai's Drifters in 2003, which premiered in Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar. He has continued to bring his patented naturalism to groundbreaking films by Chinese cinema's most critically-acclaimed directors, including Lou Ye's relationship drama Summer Palace (2006), Gao Qunshu's oriental western Wind Blast (2010), Wang Quanan's rural epic White Deer Plain (2011), Sun Zhou's postmodern romcom I Do (2012), and Feng Xiaogang's wartime satire Back to 1942 (2012). After a two year break, Duan returned to cinema screens in 2017 in two outstanding films. In Leste Chen's high-concept dystopian thriller Battle of Memories he plays a police detective investigating the bizarre case of a famous novelist who has the memories of a serial killing implanted in his brain. In wild actioner Extraordinary Mission, directed by Alan Mak and Anthony Pun, he plays a ruthless Golden Triangle drug lord. NYAFF is proud to screen both films in the presence of one of China's greatest modern actors.