Released during the Chinese New Year, this movie is ideal for viewers looking for light holiday entertainment. It has two popular leading actors, it's a family drama but above all, it's a well-made action movie with a Hollywood feel to it.
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Jay Chou is agent Jon Man Fai and he works for the IDC (International Defense Commission). He is in Jordan with his team escorting a criminal scientist to Europe. But they run into an ambush on the way, and his girlfriend, also a team member, is killed and the scientist is kidnapped. Worse of all, he ends up with a bullet lodged in his head. Since it's too dangerous to remove the bullet, he has only a few weeks left before he becomes completely paralyzed. Hence, he returns home to Beijing to be with his elderly mother.
He soon finds out that he actually has a long lost brother living in Malaysia and agrees to find and bring him back to Beijing. During his plane trip there, he meets Rachel, a doctor who looks after him because he's in pain due to the air pressure. After landing in Kuala Lumpur, Rachel is kidnapped by criminal Sean Wong (Andy On), the same team member who betrayed him in Jordan. He decides to help Rachel out, at the same time he manages to locate his lost brother Man Yeung (Nicholas Tse), who turns out to be a lawbreaker working for Sean. To complicate things even more, Sean is trying to release a mutated smallpox virus while developing a vaccine, which is why he needs Rachel since she has connection with ACDC (Asia Centre for Disease Control and Prevention).
Jon's involvement in this biological warfare is further cemented because his brother's daughter also falls into the hands of Sean, leading him to team up with Man Yeung and together, they set out to take down Sean and preventing the spread of another deadly virus outbreak.
Dante Lam is a distinguished action director and it shows here: the opening shootout in Jordan is exciting and he carries it through the whole movie, especially those sequences in Malaysia. The helicopter chase in downtown Kuala Lumpur is truly spectacular and exhilarating to watch. One street shootout involves car chases, the use of heavy weaponry, explosion and brutal hand to hand combat.
There's an equal share of melodrama in which the actors are required to cry. This drags the movie down and doesn't quite work at times. In fact the story has so many coincidences related occurrences that it becomes corny and laughable, it's unfortunate because the actors do their parts fairly well. However, Jay Chou and Nicholas Tse are solid in their roles; they handle both the action and dramatic parts exceptionally well.
Strangely, all the actors speak different languages in this movie: Andy On barks his way through in poor English, Jay Chou communicates in Mandarin while Nicholas Tse carries on in Cantonese. But they have no problem understanding each other. However, there's one annoying factor, the viewers are bombarded with lots of shots of the Petronas Towers, the Kuala Lumpur landmark, in almost every cut scene. Dante must be telling us the movie is definitely shot on location in Malaysia.
Overall, “The Viral Factor” is a slick and stylish action movie with high production value. It's big and loud, but let down by the weepy melodrama and a story which is mainly based on coincidences. Nonetheless, it's a Chinese New Year movie that's highly entertaining.
