Chinese blockbuster The Rescue from Dante Lam hits cinemas 25 January

The Rescue is the latest action thriller from the legendary Dante Lam, director of Operation Mekong and Operation Red Sea, and is set to be one of the biggest hits of Chinese New Year, with a budget of over 700 million RMB and underwater scenes shot at the world-famous Baja Studios in Mexico, where James Cameron produced Titanic.

The first Chinese film to focus on China’s Coast Guard rescue organisation, The Rescue has an all-star cast of top Chinese talent including Eddie Peng (Operation Mekong), Wang Yanlin (Operation Red Sea), Xin Zhilei (Brotherhood of Blades) and Lan Yingying (Pacific Rim Uprising). Five years in the making, the film had a high caliber Chinese and Hollywood crew headed up by Dante Lam’s long-time production partner Candy Leung, Academy Award winning cinematographer Peter Pau (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), production designer Martin Laing (Titanic) and Special Effects Supervisor John Frazier (Spider Man, Transformers and the Pirates of the Caribbean series). 

The film features four heavy-weight set pieces, each of which is almost equal to the scale and difficulty of shooting a big budget disaster film in their own right. As with all of Lam’s films, the director insisted on authenticity to make the action as hard-hitting as possible, including the use of a real aircraft in a plane crash scene, and with the cast undergoing strict professional training before the shoot and performing their own stunts during filming. 

The film hits cinemas in the U.S. and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. January 25th, day and date with China.