Director – Zhang Yimou – 2026 – China – Cert. 15 – 104m
***1/2
A mole in a small National Security department is narrowed down to one of two operatives… But which one of the two is it?– high tech surveillance thriller is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 20th
A National Security operation involving numerous operatives and frankly overwhelming high tech surveillance technology is tracking Nathan (Nathaniel Boyd) who is receiving a package from a contact on the street. A fast and furious attempt to catch him involving numerous officers, notably Yan Di (Jackson Yee from Resurrection, Bi Gan, 2025; The Battle at Lake Changjin, Chen Kaige, Dante Lam, Tsui Hark, 2021; Better Days, Derek Tsang, 2019) and Hwang Du (Zhu Yilong from Dongji Rescue, Fei Zhenxiang, Guan Hu, 2025; Only the River Flows, Wei Shujun, 2023; Lost in the Stars, Cui Rui, Liu Xiang, 2022), goes badly wrong when drone operator Chen Yi (Lin Bo Yang) accidentally steers her drone into an operative causing him to fall from a great height. After much frantic running, Nathan is apprehended hiding high up in the scaffolding behind an advertising hoarding. His location immediately brings to mind a stunt from 1980s Hong Kong cinema involving a fight on bamboo scaffolding, but for the most part there’s very little of that sort of stunt material here.
Instead, the ensuing plot takes the form of a police procedural. Technically, it’s not the police but the security forces, but it feels much the same; one immediately thinks back to Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, 2002; remade as The Departed, Martin Scorsese, 2006) There’s a mole in the three person department within National Security, and old department head Zhao (Song Jia from Shockwave, Herman Yau, 2017; Red Cliff, John Woo, 2008) is brought back in to identify them. Zhao swiftly works out its not drone operator Chen, who subsequently disappears from the film.
This leaves Yan and Hwang. The former makes a point of consistently reporting to Zhao. The latter, who is married (it’s later revealed that his wife Xiaoyu (Liu Shishi) was an old friend of Zhao’s who introduced them, and she feels conflicted about potentially having to turn him in), is involved with clandestine meetings with another woman Bai Fan (Yang Mi from King of Beggars, Gordon Chan, 1992) which seems to be less sexual (something is going on on that level, but the film doesn’t really go there) and more to do with stealing defence-related industrial secrets. Clandestine in the sense of, he changes clothing in a public lavatory before approaching her building in disguise, to keep his visits secret. Even so, he is spotted by the street dealer Li Nan (Lei Jia Lin) who interacted with Nathan during the opening and is part of the web of espionage with which Bai and Hwang are involved.
However, there are plot levels below plot levels and not everything is as it appears to be. Which of the two men is really the mole? In the last twenty minutes, revelations come thick and fast and everything is upended.
Director Zhang, who put together the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, began a successful international career with period arthouse fare (Ju Dou, 1990; Raise The Red Lantern, 1991) but is equally the director of contemporary action movies (Codename Cougar, 1989), largely ignored in the West. What you notice watching the current film isn’t exactly the plot or the action, even though it proceeds at breakneck speed, so much as the high tech surface gloss.
The visuals alternate between small scale interiors – offices, homes, cars, corridors and stairwells – and larger scale urban exteriors, mainly night time. The architecture is beautifully lit up (of itself, not by the camera, although it may well be augmented by visual effects) with the presence of bright, horizontal and vertical straight lines (with a noticeable preponderance of turquoise in the overall palette). Much is made of aerial shots of vast, circular traffic interchanges. In some shots, people on foot or in vehicles are tracked in mobile rectangles by technology which, it’s assumed, is infallible – the rectangles are not dissimilar to those in the school security system in Japan’s Happyend (Neo Sora, 2024), although this is a much larger, citywide system.
It probably says much about the Chinese social and political system that this level of high tech surveillance is never questioned, but simply seen to be a good thing. A state of affairs which is terrifying in itself. A cringeworthy song at the end underscoring the importance of duty and being part of the national project, presumably there at least in part to assure the director of future State backing for his projects.
The result is little more than a serviceable thriller which never rises above average with two watchable but unremarkable leads. Most of the supporting cast playing National Security minions, clad in chic black trousers and zip-up jackets, look, to a man (or a boy), far too beautiful to be true; it’s as if you’re watching a security force populated with boy bands in a clean, utterly dirt-free, pristine high tech city. As for the plot, while you’ll never be bored – indeed, you’re barely given time to catch your breath – you won’t remember anything here as particularly special.
Scare Out is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, February 20th.
Trailer: