Ma (Louis Koo) is a career paramedic and widower, who struggles to balance his job with caring for his daughter (Ariel Yin). While planning to emigrate from Hong Kong to Canada, Ma is paired up at work with Wong Wai (Neo Yau), a much younger and more ambitious colleague looking to climb the ranks of the city’s ambulance service.

Cheuk Wan-chi’s Vital Signs has all the hallmarks of government censorship issues: it was shot in 2021, distributed to festivals in 2023, and then re-edited and properly released in Hong Kong in May 2025. Is it worth the wait? Possibly not – you see one Cantonese melodrama, and you have seen most of them – but as a snapshot of a specific place and time it does bring a lot of value.

It is a strong showcase for Louis Koo, pushing the popular actor away from the comfort zone of crime and action films into something more grounded. 10 years ago the role of Ma would be a shoe-in for the likes of Simon Yam, and it is good to see Koo – 51 years old when he shot this – stretching himself in a different direction to his usual fare. There is plenty with which he can play here too: Ma carries the guilt of not saving his late wife’s life, while putting on a brave face for their young daughter Bonnie. At the same time his back is giving out from decades of service, which is a common problem among paramedics. There is the opportunity to migrate to Canada and join his wife’s parents, but Bonnie may not wish to go and Canadian immigration may not accept his visa application given his health problems. Koo handles this material well, edging well on the side of stoic realism over exaggerated drama.

Neo Yau makes a strong impression as the cocky Wong Wai. To a large part he is playing a stereotype – par for the course for this kind of Hong Kong drama – but he does successfully introduce some distinctive levels of emotion and plays his role with a suitable energy. During Hong Kong’s student-led Umbrella Movement Yau led a satirical performing group criticising the local government; given the delays from shooting to release, there is a chance it is his presence that caused some of the trouble.

A more likely culprit, however, is the film’s presentation of Ma looking to leave the city for Canada. It seems fair to say that Hong Kong has undergone some difficult changes in recent years, with the aforementioned Umbrella Movement leading to the Chinese government exerting a much stronger hand over the Hong Kong special administrative region. The implementation of a strict national security law in 2020 – right before Vital Signs was shot – inspired a wave of emigration by Hong Kong residents on a scale not seen since the handover of 1997. Estimates vary, but somewhere between 200 and 500 thousand people have left the city for the United Kingdom and Canada. The Hong Kong population remains the same, thanks to immigration from the mainland, but such a significant exodus is potentially a bad look for the Chinese government. The result is a strange film where everyone in Hong Kong seems to be sad, and many are seeking means to leave, but nobody is talking about why. The film feels bowdlerised.

There is entertainment value to be found here, but what the finished film does not say is potentially much more interesting than what it does.