Crime thrillers-among world cinema's most enduring genres-continue to captivate countless audiences thanks to their suspense-laden themes and cat-and-mouse plots.

Caught in Time provides the genre's first major Chinese release in 2020, highlighting the efforts of law enforcement to crack down on crimes in China in the 1990s. The film is currently lifting the nation's box office out of its post-National Day holiday slump.

Inspired by the hunting down of several notorious armed gangsters who were involved in numerous robberies and murders in the 1990s, and the brave police officers involved in bringing them to justice, the movie, which hit domestic theaters on Friday, has already notched up takings of 205 million yuan ($31.2 million), usurping war blockbuster The Sacrifice from top spot of the country's box-office charts.

Helmed by scriptwriter-turned-director Lau Ho-leung, known for Painted Skin and Kung Fu Jungle, the film brings A-list actors Wang Qianyuan and Daniel Wu together for the first time in their respective 20-year careers.

After a best-actor win at the Tokyo International Film Festival for The Piano in a Factory in 2011, Wang starred in several crime blockbusters such as Saving Mr Wu (2015) and Peace Breaker (2017), impressing domestic audiences as a silver screen tough guy.

"Most of my previous police and crime films are set closer to present day, but Caught in Time is a story that takes place more than 20 years ago, giving me a new experience to learn how the police worked in that period," Wang said during an interview at the film's Beijing premiere on Nov 16.

"Acting is an interesting job. One of its biggest charms is that it always helps you to experience a different life, making every movie like the start of a new career," he adds.

Due to the limitations in forensic technology back then, Chinese police faced greater challenges in solving crimes than they do today.

Set in southern China between 1991 and 1994, the film follows Wang's police captain who, alongside his fellow officers, sets out to face off against ruthless gangsters who use illegally purchased guns to rob banks and stores, causing the deaths of dozens of police officers and civilians in the process.

Meanwhile, Wu is no stranger to playing the villain, with some of his best-known baddies taking on Jackie Chan in New Police Story (2004) and Shinjuku Incident (2009). For this latest outing he has shaved his eyebrows and kept to a strict diet for the role.

In an earlier interview with domestic media outlets, Wu says his character in this film, Zhang Sun-depicted as a Cantonese-speaking, hippie-like hooligan-has a complex personality.

"I think he (the character) is not a common bandit. He has a sharp mind, enabling him to quickly discover holes in the security system of banks or stores. He takes robbery somewhat more as a profession than just stealing money, so he even tries to seek an honorable way to die when he realizes he has nowhere to escape."

Near the end of the film, the most nerve-wracking scene occurs in a public bath. Forced to flee back to his hometown after all of his fellow gangsters and his mistress have been either killed or captured, Wu's character struggles during the last and most violent standoff against Wang's police captain.

For a scene that features both characters half-naked, wrapped in bath towels, the two actors trained for nearly 40 days to sharpen their moves for the stunts and stuck to a diet of mostly chicken breast to increase their muscle mass.

As a result, while shooting Caught in Time in Jiangmen, South China's Guangdong province, between late 2018 and early 2019, the location Wang and Wu "bumped into each other" the most was not the film set, but at the local gym. In order to build an atmosphere, the pair gathered fellow actors who were playing cops or gangsters and intentionally "split" them into two groups while training.

Some advanced screenings were held in mid-November, with most critics hailing the film as a successful mix of a typical Hong Kong gangster film and mainland real-life cases, propelling its scores on the country's two largest ticketing services, Maoyan and Taopiaopiao, to 8.8 and 8.7 points out of 10, respectively.