Time-travel stories were briefly in the crosshairs of the Chinese censors in the early 2010s, because of how they potentially subverted “official” history. It’s not clear if the hit 2001 Hong Kong TV series A Step Into the Past – about a modern-day cop transported to the third-century BC “warring states” period – was seen as an offender. But it is evidently all go for Chinese time-travel movies now, and hence this glossy cinematic reprise of A Step Into the Past that picks up the main characters 20 years on.
Louis Koo returns as former policeman Hong Siu Lung, still trapped in the Qin dynasty and lying low with his family after putting his disciple Chiu Poon (Raymond Lam) on the throne. Back in the present, the time machine’s inventor Ken (Michael Miu Kiu-wai) has just been released from a prison stretch for botching the technology and marooning Hong. He maintains it is unfair, but he doesn’t muck about with a grievance procedure; he goes full Vader and resolves to head back and become Qin emperor himself.
The film proceeds at a nippy pace, with some larky sections, but directors Jack Lai and Yuen Fai Ng don’t take it in the expected direction, which would be an anachronism-hugging comedy of manners à la Les Visiteurs or Back to the Future. Ken blowing everyone’s minds, and the Qin footsoldier ranks, with 21st-century ordnance is about as subtle as it gets in what amounts to an extended chase sequence after the emperor. There are some passable sequences, such as a cart-borne escape down a hillside tea plantation. But the fight choreography is rote gun-fu – surprisingly, as it’s overseen by old master Sammo Hung – and often chopped into restrictive closeups.
Worse, the soapy convolutions of the story take on an increasingly sententious tone, with Ken’s betrayed daughter (Baihe Bai) becoming a mouthpiece for lectures on megalomania and history. And Lam’s cold-eyed tyrant is too often asked to flip dutifully back into the character of Hong’s misty-eyed ward, especially when a callback montage to the original show is looming. A Step Into the Past diehards might appreciate this trip down the warphole, but nostalgia is far too basic a technology for most people these days.
• Back to the Past is in UK and Irish cinemas now.
