While the police commissioner is away in Copenhagen, a police van on patrol goes missing along with its five officers and high-tech surveillance gear. Soon a ransom demand arrives and the police department goes into lockdown under two deputy commissioners who can’t stand each other: MB Lee (Tony Leung Ka-fai), a battle-hardened vet who isn’t above a little waterboarding to protect Hong Kong, and Sean Lau (superstar Aaron Kwok in a startling performance), a steely technocrat who never walked a beat, and a stickler for respecting citizens’ rights.

When it’s revealed that Lee’s son is one of the abducted patrolmen, he starts sending cops into harm’s way, while Lau tries to figure out how to stop him from using bureaucratic judo. Office politics become blood sport in which a well-timed phone call is worse than a knife in the back. Winner of nine Hong Kong Film Awards, Cold War is a cracking thriller about Hong Kong’s relationship with China in which the police force tears itself apart, the gunsmoke slowly settles, and “the biggest enemy is always on the inside.”

Presented with the support of Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office New York.