Synopsis

Inspector Ho Sheung-sang faces a new opponent when a mysterious thief with a magician's flair begins manipulating a tense extortion scheme involving a businesswoman and missing artwork. As the thief stages elaborate tricks and smoke-screen diversions, Ho is drawn into another cat-and-mouse contest where deduction, timing, and nerve matter more than conventional police work.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film's original Chinese title is Am zin 2, also rendered as An zhan 2. The title literally means "Hidden War 2."

• It is a sequel to the 1999 film Running Out of Time, but shifts the central conflict from the first film's criminal challenge to a magician-like thief and his elaborate deceptions.

• Running Out of Time 2 was released in Hong Kong on December 27, 2001. It runs approximately 95 minutes and uses Cantonese and English.

• The film won Golden Horse Awards for Best Action Choreography and Best Film Editing. It also received the Hong Kong Film Critics Society's Film of Merit Award.

• The sequel was substantially less successful at the Hong Kong box office than its predecessor, taking about HK$5.9 million compared with the original's roughly HK$14.6 million.

• Its international festival profile continued after the Hong Kong release, including a screening at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2007.