Tuesday 18 February 2020

Chinese Crime Series (Part 2)

Thunder Vanguard is a Chinese Crime/Police series from Zhejiang TV. It tells the story of rookie police dog handler Bai Jing (Liu Yuanyuan) and her attempts to bring to justice the members of a Chinese Triad drug smuggling gang. Opposing her in this pursuit are Chen Xiyuan (Haotian) the main operative of the gang, Fang Huimin a murderous and vicious drug runner, a loyal and ruthless henchwoman who works for Chen and one or two minor villainesses who are all involved in supplying the drugs or tracking down a cache of drugs which have gone missing but whose location in located on 2 map halves. Here are the female characters described above.

Right, there are far too many plot lines and great scenes to document separately so I will just give you the major highlights. On first appearances Chen seems to be a nice successful actress who is destined to be the love interest of one of the male police characters.
However appearances can be deceptive and Chen is soon shown to be not so innocent as she appears and her true character becomes apparent. Here she is in her more ruthless persona plotting and giving instructions to her subordinates.
Fang Huimin is identifiable as a bad girl almost from the start. At one stage she is lured in to a police trap in a restaurant but she is not the kind of lady to go easily. One dead policeman later she has also injured Bai Ling and her canine.
At this juncture there are many parties trying to gather two pieces of a map which shows the location of a drugs cache. Chen is more than willing to torture and kill in order to get the two pieces of the map.
Whilst all this is going on Fang is pursuing her own agenda and plans to get the map pieces and if this involves shooting police officers on the way she does it.
Fang shoots herself in the leg to present herself as a victim rather than a rival to Chen. However Chen discovers Fang's duplicity and takes her revenge on her.

Despite Chen's shooting of Fang and her hench woman checking Fang's prostrate body it turns out Fang was wearing a bullet proof vest. It is left to Bai to put an end to Fang's criminal career who is seeking revenge for the death of her police colleague previously.
Chen now receives new instruction from her boss and her efforts to complete her assignment reaches new heights as she blackmails her policeman lover and she and her henchwoman kidnap those who stand in her way.
Chen's fatal mistake is when she kidnaps another friend of Bai. Despite the fact that Bai is taken hostage, injected with drugs and otherwise mistreated she manages to turn the tables on Chen and she and her loyal henchwoman meet their fate.