Drug War
Drug War Image
Metascore
88

Universal acclaim - based on 18 Critics What's this?

User Score
8.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 9 Ratings

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  • Starring: , , ,
  • Summary: A drug cartel boss who is arrested in a raid is coerced into betraying his former accomplices as part of an undercover operation.

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 18
  3. Negative: 0 out of 18
  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: G. Allen Johnson
    Aug 15, 2013
    100
    I'll go ahead and call Drug War the best Hong Kong action movie since "Infernal Affairs" (the 2002 film that Martin Scorsese remade as "The Departed"), even though technically it's a Chinese film.
  2. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: Chuck Bowen
    Jul 17, 2013
    100
    The film is a singularly huge, relentless, all-encompassing set piece that mutates and spasms with terrifying lack of foresight. It's all business, business, business.
  3. indieWIRE
    Reviewed by: Eric Kohn
    Jul 23, 2013
    91
    More traditional in terms of atmosphere and plot, Drug War nevertheless features a tense, unstoppable momentum, a morally ambiguous protagonist and hugely involving action scenes.
  4. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Deborah Young
    Jul 17, 2013
    90
    In Drug War, Hong Kong genre master Johnnie To gives a superlative lesson on how to give an updated, thoroughly engrossing twist to the classic cops-and-robbers chase.
  5. RogerEbert.com
    Reviewed by: Simon Abrams
    Jul 26, 2013
    88
    The film's flintiness and initially subdued nastiness set it apart from most other action films about the thin line separating cops from crooks.
  6. The Dissolve
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    Jul 25, 2013
    80
    While Drug War is ultimately more an exercise in craft than a movie with a lot on its mind, it’s a remarkably skillful exercise, and hardly devoid of ideas.
  7. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Jordan Hoffman
    Jul 17, 2013
    63
    Drug War is by no means a bad film, but it doesn’t do much to push the needle of originality, and doesn’t glide enough to represent perfection of the genre.

See all 18 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 1 out of 3
  1. Thegodfatherson
    Jul 27, 2013
    9
    The rules about on-screen violence are much tougher in China than in Hong Kong. How To got this past the censors is a mystery. Hong Kong auteur Johnnie To is a master of high-octane action movies like “Election” and “Sparrow,” but he’s yet to get a breakthrough hit in the US. If any of his flicks deserves to do so, it’s “Drug War,” a rare To co-production with China. The action is set on the mainland, mostly in the gritty industrial city of Jinhai. Drug-factory boss Timmy Choi (Louis Koo) faces the death penalty after being rounded up in an undercover operation, but makes a deal with a police captain Zhang (Sun Honglei) to rat out his pals in exchange for saving his life. (Manufacturing just 50 grams of meth in China will earn you a lethal injection.) Cars go crunch, bullets fly, blood spurts, bodies splatter and an unbelievable amount of cocaine is snorted. “Drug War” features a large cast of cops and gangsters, but the film’s center is the interaction between Timmy and Zhang. In one frantic scene, Zhang flips out after snorting coke, only to have his life saved by a fast-thinking Timmy.… Expand
  2. theseparator
    Sep 22, 2013
    8
    The drab, dusty, industrial backdrop of what is purported as the unglamorous metropolis of Tian Jin, China, tacky haute facades are the setting for Drugs War’s series of raw, tension filled episodes. From a country riddled with censorship, Drugs Wars, a film by Johnnie To, is an unbridled glimpse of organized crime and crystal meth in China. Although perhaps a tad sensationalistic, the film delivers a bold statement: the Chinese the drug market is alive and well.

    Louis Koo plays a busted crystal meth baron who has a choice, either help police bust a massive organized crime syndicate, or be executed. He chooses to help police.

    In an elaborate tireless scheme, actor Honglei Sun dazzlingly plays a police officer portraying a criminal in the attempt to infiltrate this upper echelon syndicate. The best scene of the film is when Sun’s character is forced to rail two massive lines of crystal meth as part of this act. The effects of the meth play out into a powerful piece of cinema. Post- OD, literally having come back from the edge death, the chase for the criminals continues with out a flinch.

    At times this police tenacity is too exaggerated to be believable. The chase for the bad guys goes on endlessly for days. None of the cops ever eat or sleep. They seem to have inexhaustible resources at their disposal. They are able to commandeer an entire harbor just to put on a show of authenticity for the crooks. The cops risk their lives over and over, and for what? To rid the world of a few truckloads of drugs? The conventional divide between the good guy cops and bad guy criminals doesn’t blur, until it does. After an epic final gun battle, we have no idea who’s who.

    Drug Wars attains excellence as an action movie and serves as a rare example of a controversial work to emerge from a country that produces so much state-approved propaganda.    … Expand
  3. snoozepill
    Jul 27, 2013
    2
    I really don't understand the wildly positive reviews this is getting. It's a basic police procedural. A drug dealer gets busted and agrees to cooperate with the police, but his allegiances remain unclear until the final third of the film. You can guess where this one's going. The last 15 minutes are full of over the top John Woo-style gun violence, but it's nothing worth sitting through the rest of the movie to see, especially since the film gives you absolutely no reason to care whether any of the characters live or die. Don't bother with this garbage.… Expand

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